Chris Coles Bangkok Nightlife Paintings @ Forth Gallery Singapore

"One Night in Bangkok" Show - Chris Coles

Opening Reception:
Wednesday 5 August
7PM @ Forth Gallery
69A Pagoda Street
Singapore

The blinding neon and shady denizens of the Bangkok night are captured vividly in American painter Chris Coles' watercolor renditions of the lurid and colorful world of the Thai capital's notorious nightlife.

Heavily distorted lines and strong, clashing colors dominate in these paintings which portray a chaotic, edgy noir world of colliding intention and misplaced desire, lives out of balance, male-female compulsion, alienation and disassociation.

They echo the German Expressionist paintings from Berlin in the early 1900’s as well as the Paris nightlife paintings of Toulouse-Lautrec, Degas and the early Picasso.

Organized into twinkling street scenes, situational encounters and mesmerizing portraits of the girls, the boys, the kathoeys (ladyboys) and their clients, Chris Coles shows us how the Bangkok night isn’t “only a sordid money-machine servicing the low-end of humanity”, but “an authentic and unique setting in the ongoing cultural history of mankind”.

The Exhibition, which kicks off the 2nd week of Singapore's IndigNation Festival, runs until 16 August 2009.