Time and Thailand: A quick survey
One of the best online resources providing an overview of the seriously eclectic art happening in Thailand is that of theRama IX Art Museum on Bangkok’s Yaowaraj Road, though even it’s still got a ways to go to approach definitiveness. There is good linkage with other galleries, though, including two over on Silom Road that specialise in “emerging artists”.
There’s an elastic term for you. At what point in his career does an artist stop “emerging” and arrive at where he supposedly wants to be/ ought to be? With his first big sale? His first write-up in the paper? When his name is in lights on Broadway?
Anyway, I’ll leave it to the dealers to decide when a caterpillar’s become a butterfly, though this facet of time’s passing is woven into the current art of a kingdom whose people proudly remember their quietly contemplative ancestral ways while rushing headlong into the loudly wired future. The country’s best-known artists fret grievously, and those not still shouting warnings from the gate look about for avenues of retreat.
La Lanta Fine Art and the Thivabu Gallery both have lots of contemporary Asian painting, sculpture, photography and drawing and do alright selling prints, frames and decorative notebooks. On this page is a cursory survey of paintings by some of their featured Thai artists, many originals selling for under $2,000.
At the Thivabu (the name is an amalgam of Thailand, Vietnam and Burma), Jitagarn Kaewtinkoy from Suphan Buri strikes me as one of the more unusual creative talents. That’s “Three Faces” at the top of this post and “Mr President” here. The cartoonist’s sensibility betrays his age, 28, but he’s got a ferocious satiric streak and a sharp eye for character. Bush isn’t the only politician who need worry. There are a few more of his pieces here.
This is “The Transformation of Sita” by Jirapat Tasanasomboon (alternatively Tatsanasomboon), who utlises comics both more directly and more acutely.
Pop art is in fact in full force in the works of this thirtysomething wit from Samut Prakhan, who has no compunction whatsoever about including Elvis, James Dean or John Wayne in a scene from the classic tale of Ramayana, or Ramakien, as it’s known in Thailand. Click on the image here for a large version of Marilyn Monroe starring in “The Dream (After Rousseau)”. Shown below are Jirapat’s cheeky “Lovers (1)” and “Lovers (2)”.
Somewhat older still, Bangkokian Sudjai Chaiyapan goes for the surrealistic and the symbolic in “Life and Chains #3″, seen here, and “Centre Point 4″, below.
At some point in the last decade Sudjai got tired of making statements on canvas about environmental atrocities and turned, perhaps hopefully, to love and relationships. The gallery’s website suggests that the flowers represent his emotions and speak for him, telling his story. It also points out that he uses a cutter blade to produce his fastidiously fine lines.
Here I’ve scalped the gallery’s own animated GIF showing the various components of Vasan Sitthiket’s series “Blacklist — Thai Politicians”, which you would think might have landed him in a heap of trouble. But he’s apparently still unmolested, unjailed and uncowed, busily producing plays, poetry, novels, children’s books and political essays.
And this is “Misled — Crazy”, which the 52-year-old from Nakhon Sawan has said is about someone (it’s not clear who) being duped into seeing the world as a flower (for the plucking, presumably), seeing “itself” as being bigger than the earth, seeing greed as “never enough” and as needing to be “the emperor of brutal America”.
Vasan is downright pissed off about the rich exploiting the poor, governments being corrupt and people doing stupid things because of avarice and lust, and it’s a gloomy worldview that people have been treated to in shows not just right across Asia but in Europe too, at the 2003 Venice Biennale.
The pop-erotic paintings of Thaweesak Srithongdee garner attention, but politically charged works like “X” provide a more fascinating challenge, and the 37-year-old wants viewers to be free in their choice of interpretation.
Thaweesak has had shows in the Netherlands, Germany and Britain, and two years ago held a residency at the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum in Japan. There are a few more of his works here.
Over at La Lanta, Chatchai Puipia is doubtless the most famous featured artist. I’ve posted this work, “Siamese Smile”, previously, making note of the stir created in New York by this alternative view of that ostensibly beatific Thai hospitality that the tourism authority promotes so capably.
Born 1964, Chatchai is another Thai who doesn’t like the direction in which his country is heading, even as he watches it from afar from his home in Tokyo. Industrialisation, technology and globalisation, imported from the West, lead only, in his view, to “fake happiness and demeaning superficiality”. For a few more pieces by Chatchai, go here.
There is much more that’s provocative and highly inventive in modern Thai art (see previous Dali House posts on Navin Rawanchaikul and Deang Buasan), but there is also a surprising amount of flavoured tonality. Of what? I’m looking for a more upbeat term for “decorative”. People need decorative art too, and Atthasit Pokpong shows how capably enthusiastic he is in capturing scenes around his hometown with “Flower Market 1″, seen here.
Below are “Sunset in Bangkok” by Kriengkrai Paojinda and “Thai Way of Life 3″ by Witthawat Thongkaew, both wonderfully evocative of the place without being overtly touristy, which is exactly what the City of Angels needs.
