Suranand Vejjajiva interviews Chris Coles for Thai TV

Bangkok Noir Artist Chris Coles

Suranand: How are you doing?

สุรันันทน์ สบายดีนะครับ

Chris: Sabai-dee krub

คริส สบายดีครับ

S: You speak a little Thai, so we should interview you in Thai

ส: พูดไทยได้นิดหน่อยไหมครับ น่าจะสัมภาษณ์เป็นภาษาไทย

C: Pood Thai mai dai

ค: พูดไทยไม่ได้

S: So “Bangkok Noir,” I am quite familiar with your work but you need to explain to the audience what “Bangkok Noir” is to you

ส: เรื่องของ “บางกอกนัวร์” ผมเองคุ้นเคยกับงานของคุณ แต่ต้องขอให้คุณช่วยอธิบายต่อผู้ชมว่าสำหรับคุณแล้วอะไรคือความหมายของ “บางกอกนัวร์”

C: Bangkok Noir is kind of an artistic movement and there are about five writers and myself and basically we are using a night time Bangkok as a setting for stories, paintings, for artistic work. And the basic idea is kind of a playful use of all the night time settings as seen in Bangkok. When the lights are on, and the neon shining, and everyone looks kind of dressed up and you don’t see a lot of the small flaws like the bad sidewalks because it’s night time and it’s dark.

ค: “บางกอกนัวร์” เป็นความเคลื่อนไหวทางศิลปะ โดยมีนักเขียนประมาณ 5 คน และตัวผม โดยใช้กรุงเทพยามราตรีเป็นพื้นที่สำหรับเดินเรื่องเล่า ภาพวาด และงานศิลปะต่างๆ แนวคิดพื้นฐานคือการใช้กรุงเทพฯอย่างสนุกๆในการเล่าเรื่องราว เมื่อแสงไฟสว่างขึ้น ไฟนีออนเปิด ทุกคนลุกขึ้นมาแต่งตัว และคุณไม่เห็นข้อบกพร่องเล็กๆน้อยๆอย่างทางเท้าที่ชำรุด เพราะเป็นเวลากลางคืนและอยู่ในความมืด

S: So that’s what intrigued you, what’s behind that curiosity?

ส: นั่นคือเรื่องที่ดึงดูดให้คุณสนใจ อะไรคือเบื้องหลังของความสงสัย

C: I think the reason is it attracts writers and artists, the Bangkok Noir night time is because of the very interesting, dramatic setting and the many players in the setting from all over the world, Russians, Arabs, Iranians, Indians, Chinese, Australians, Germans, as well as Thais, and also Japanese, Koreans, Malaysians. People at night are moving around in a different way than the day. The night people are somehow leading more free lives in a sense, not conforming to office rules or company rules. And so you see people in a more colorful way. People are doing more colorful things and it lends itself to artistic or drama or stories.

ค: ผมว่าเหตุผลที่ดังดูดนักเขียนและจิตรกรสู่ “บางกอกนัวร์” ยามกลางคืน เพราะเป็นเรื่องน่าสนใจ มีเนื้อเรื่องและตัวละครมาจากทั่วโลก ไม่ว่าจะเป็น รัสเซีย อาหรับ อิหร่าน อินเดีย จีน ออสเตรเลีย เยอรมัน รวมทั้งคนไทย และ ญี่ปุ่น เกาหลี มาเลเซีย คนกลางคืนนั้นเคลื่อนไหวใช้ชีวิตแตกต่างจากคนกลางวัน คุณจะเห็นคนในวิถีที่มีสีสัน คนที่ใช้ชีวิตมีสีสัน ทำให้เกิดงานศิลป์ ดราม่า และเรื่องเล่า

S: That’s why all the colors and strong brush strokes

ส: นั่นคือที่มาของสีและการระบายสีที่มีพลัง

C: Right, in a way the colors are all coming from lighting rather than from daylight. So you get a much stronger color. At night time in a bar or a restaurant or a nightclub, you often have green lights, red lights, blue lights, all kinds of color lights. And you get hot zones of light and dark zones of light. So you get a much more dramatic lighting. While in a daytime you get kind of a flat light where everything is kind of lit the same level. And it’s not as interesting dramatically.

ค: ถูกต้อง ในทางหนึ่ง สีเหล่านั้นมาจากแสงไฟมากกว่าแสงอาทิตย์ในเวลากลางวัน คุณจึงได้สีที่เข้มข้นกว่า ในเวลากลางคืนในบาร์ ร้านอาหาร หรือ ไนต์คลับ คุณจะเห็นไฟสีเขียว ไฟสีแดง ไฟสีฟ้า และสีที่หลาหลาย คุณจึงมีโซนที่ร้อนจากแสง และโซนที่มืดจากแสง ทำให้ได้พื้นที่ที่มีแสงแปลกแตกต่าง ในเวลากลางวันคุณจะได้แสงที่ธรรมดาที่ทุกอย่างสว่างเท่ากัน ซึ่งไม่น่าสนใจและไม่แปลกประหลาด

S: Do you feel that you look at night time in Thailand the same way as Thais do?

ส: คุณรู้สึกไหมว่าคุณมองเมืองไทยในเวลากลางคืนแตกต่างจากที่คนไทยมอง

C: I think because I am an outsider in Thailand, I see things very differently. When I go into a nightclub, I sit at the corner usually so I disappear and they don’t come after me to buy too many drinks

ค: ผมคิดว่าเป็นเพราะผมเป็นคนนอกในเมืองไทย ตลกดีที่เวลาผมไปในไนต์คลับ ผมจะนั่งในหลบมุม ผมจะทำตัวให้หายไป และเป็นวิธีที่ดีที่ทำให้ไม่มีคนมาถามว่าผมจะดื่มอะไรด้วย

S: That’s the trick!

ส: นั่นเป็นวีการที่ดี!

C: One of the first things I do is start counting all the lighting sources and in some night clubs there might be 3 or 4,000 lights. And I kind of catalogue them. I go round the whole club, cataloging all the lights, the red lights, the green lights, you know, the lights going on and off, the lights bouncing off the mirrors. Then I watch how the lights are going onto the people despite how we tend to translate the lights back to normal. The fact that there is green light here, blue light here, red light here, it’s a kind of a sea of light. I think Thais are very clever with lighting without actually thinking about it too much because I think in Thai temples, spirit houses and a lot of things in the Thai tradition people use lighting a lot. And so when anyone opens a restaurant, bar, night club in Thailand, first thing they do is put lot of lights in it.

ค: สิ่งหนึ่งที่ผมทำอย่างแรกๆคือการ “นับ” แหล่งไฟต่างๆ ในไนต์คลับบางแห่งจะมีไฟประมาณ 3 -4 พันดวง และผมจะจดบันทึกไว้ เดินไปทั่วคลับ เก็บราละเอียดเกี่ยวกับไฟ ไฟสีแดง ไฟสีเขียว ไฟที่เปิดและปิดสลับกันไปมา และแสงไฟที่สะท้อนจากกระจก จากนั้นผมจะสังเกตแสงที่กระทบต่อคนซึ่งทำให้แสงเป็นปกติ ด้วยเหตุที่ทีมีไฟสีเขียวตรงนี้ ไฟสีฟ้าตรงนั้น สีแดงตรงนี้ เป็นเสมือนทะเลของไฟสี ผมคิดว่าคนไทยฉลาดในการจัดไฟโดยไม่ต้องคิดมาก ผมคิดว่าวัดไทย ศาลพระภูมิ และอีกหลายอย่างในวัฒนธรรมที่ใช้แสงไฟจำนวนมาก ใครที่ต้องการเปิดร้านอาหาร บาร์ หรือไนต์คลับในประเทศไทย จะต้องแสดงให้เห็นถึงแสงไฟ

S: The way you see and the way you use lighting and the way you express in your paintings, it’s not the normal Thai way of looking at the beautiful, the bright lights,

ส: วีที่คุณทองเห็น และวิธีที่คุณใช้แสงซึ่งสะท้อนในภาพวาดของคุณ ไม่ใช่การมองที่ปกติของคนไทย ซึ่งชอบมองสิ่งสวยสิ่งงามและมีความสว่าง

C: I think when a normal person goes out at night, they want to relax, and stop worrying about the daily troubles..

ค: ผมคิดว่าเวลาปกติคนออกไปเที่ยวยามค่ำคืน พวกเขาต้องการการพักผ่อน และลืมเรื่องเครียดที่มาจากปัญหารายวัน

S: What are you trying to really express

ส: คุณกำลังต้องการแสดงหรือสะท้อนอะไร?

C: When I go out at night, I am not just relaxing or escaping, I am actually working. So whereas a normal person would go to a club and let it just wash over him, all the effects that make up the illusion and create the artificial space where you can just escape and forget the daily problems. I go in and try to deconstruct the illusion – so I deconstruct how the lights are working, how the sound's working, how the decoration is working, what the people are doing in the relationship to each other and I kind of almost study the structure of the club, the structure of the entertainment venue and how it was put together and how it works. I am looking at it with a different eye than someone who is just relaxing. I am looking at it as though I were going to take it all apart and then reconstruct it in a painting

ค: เวลาผมไปยามค่ำคืน ผมไม่ได้ต้องการพักผ่อนหรือหนีสิ่งใด ผมไปทำงาน ในขณะที่คนธรรมดา ไปเที่ยวคลับจะอิ่มเอิบไปกับสิ่งต่างๆ อันเนื่องมากจากภาพลวงที่สร้างพื้นที่ปลอมให้หลีกหนีและลืมปัญหารายวันนั้นๆ ผมเข้าไปแล้วผมพยายามที่จะแยกส่วนว่าระบบไฟทำงานอย่างไร เสียงทำงานอย่างไร และการตกแต่งเป็นอย่างไร ผู้คนใดกำลังผูกความสัมพันธ์กัน และผมศึกษาโครงสร้างของคลับ โครงสร้างของแหล่งบันเทิง และการประกอบเข้าด้วยกัน และทำงานอย่างไร ผมจะเห็นด้วยตาที่แตกต่างจากบางคนที่มาเพียงเพื่อพักผ่อน ผมมองเหมือนจะแยกทุกอย่างออกจากกัน และกลับมาต่อกันเป็นภาพวาด

S: But the subjects themselves, the ladies, the lady-boys, the activities that are going on..

ส: แต่ตัวละครทุกคน ผู้หญิง กะเทย และกิจกรรมที่ทำกันอยู่…

C: Basically, I am trying to draw the personality and the inner life of the subjects. The surface presentation, the make-up, hair, and costumes are there for a purpose – to make money, to sell to a customer. But I am trying to find out what’s going on inside the person and somehow express that in the painting. So I have the surface they are wearing and then I try to go inside what they are feeling. They might be smiling but that’s just for the customer. Actually, maybe their child is sick or their mother and father are having problems and inside they are worrying, they are not smiling.

โดยพื้นฐานแล้ว ผมจะวาดบุคลิกและเรื่องราวชีวิตภายในของแต่ละคน ภาพด้านนอก การแต่งหน้า เสื้อผ้า ล้วนมีเหตุที่มา – เพื่อใช้หาเงิน เพื่อขายให้ลูกค้า แต่ผมพยายามจะค้นหาว่าอะไรขับเคลื่อนภายในตัวแต่ละคน และนำมาเสนอผ่านภาพวาด ผมจะแสดงถึงทั้งผิวภายนอกและความรู้สึกภายใน บางคนอาจยิ้มแต่ไม่ใช่สำหรับลูกค้า ในความเป็นจริงลุกเขาอาจกำลังป่วย พ่อและแม่มีปัญหา และภายในเต็มไปด้วยความกังวล เขาไม่ได้ยิ้มอย่างที่เห็น

For instance this is a painting of Viktor Bout, the Russian spy who was arrested, and my pretense is that the painting of him is at the moment he is arrested when they went into the hotel room. And he was kind of chubby then, before he spent some time in the Thai prison when he got much thinner. And I try to get in his eyes the idea that he knew at the moment that the door is opened, and the people came into the room, he knew he was in a trap. And he was thinking why did I come here, why did I not see this, and he knew that there was no way that he would get out of that trap, and I think you can see that in his eyes, even though his exterior, normally he would be a very confident man, chubby Russian robust physique.

ตัวอย่างเช่นรูปนี้ เป็นรูปของนายวิคเตอร์ บูธ สายลับชาวรัสเซียซึ่งถูกจับ ผมลองจินตนาการวาดภาพเขาตอนที่เขาวินาทีที่เขาถูกจับเมื่อเจ้าหน้าที่เข้าไป ในห้องโรงแรมของเขา เขาค่อนข้างท้วมเพราะเป็นช่วงก่อนที่เขาต้องเข้าไปนอนในคุกไทย ซึ่งทำให้เขาผอมลงมาก ผมพยายามที่จะทำให้นัยน์ตาของเขาที่สะท้อนความคิดของเขาเมื่อประตูห้องเปิด และมีคนเข้ามาในห้องของเขา เขารู้ตัวว่าติดกับดักเสียแล้ว และเขาคิดว่าเขามาทำอะไรที่นี่ และเขาไม่เห็นหนทางที่จะหลุดจากกับดักนี้ได้ ผมคิดว่าคุณเห็นได้จากแววตาของเขา ถึงแม้ว่ากายภาพภายนอกปกติเขาจะเป็นคนที่มีความมั่นใจสูง ท้วมใหญ่อย่างชาวรัสเซีย

S: Do people find your paintings scary, in a way?

ส: คุณคิดว่าคนทั่วไปเห็นภาพวาดของคุณแล้วรู่สึกกลัวไหม

C: Yeah I think some of the paintings are scary because some of the people I encounter in the Bangkok night are kind of scary. For example the lady boy over here, is definitely a scary lady-boy. She is just so wild and so intense that if you know something about Bangkok, you kind of like, back off a little bit because she might bite off your arm.

ค: ใช่ ผมคิดว่าภาพบางภาพน่ากลัว เพราะคนบางคนที่ผมพบยามค่ำคืนในกรุงเทพค่อนข้างน่ากลัว ตัวอย่างเช่น กะเทยคนนี้ น่ากลัวแน่นอน เธอเป็นคนพิสดารและเข้มข้น และหากคุณรู้เรื่องบางเรื่องของกรุงเทพ คุณจะรู้ว่าเธอสามารถกัดแขนคุณขาดได้!!

S: Well, we are at the gallery anyway and you are show is going to be here until at the end of April, we will walk around a little bit and see what you have in mind in other kinds of paintings too.

ส: ในเมื่อเรามานั่งอยู่ที่แกลอรี่นี้ซึ่งกำลังแสดงงานของคุณอยู่จนสิ้นเดือน เมษายนนี้ เราไปเดินชมภาพผลงานของคุณกันดีกว่า และจะได้เห็นด้วยว่าคุณคิดอะไรผ่านภาพเหล่านั้น

(Break-Walk พัก-เดิน)

S: She certainly look scary up-close

ส: ดูน่ากลัวจริงๆอย่างที่คุณว่า เมื่อมายืนใกล้ๆ

C: Yeah, this is a lady-boy, in some respect a very successful lady-boy. She makes a great deal of money and a kind of powerful lady-boy. She is so powerful and so intense that she is a little bit scary, has a tremendous aggression and hunger to her. I always show the lady-boy and I have painted quite a few lady-boys; I almost always show them from the shoulders up rather than their whole bodies.

ค: ใช่ กะเทยคนนี้ ในมิติหนึ่งถือว่าประสบความสำเร็จมาก เธอหาเงินได้เยอะและเป็นผุ้มีอิทธิพลคนหนึ่ง เธอมีพลังที่เข้มข้นจนทำให้เธอน่ากลัว และมีความก้าวร้าว ความหิวโหย ผมชอบแสดงภาพกะเทยและได้วาดไว้จำนวนหนึ่ง ผมจะวาดเฉพาะท่อนบนมากกว่าจะให้เห็นทั้งตัว

S: But you get the intensity

ส: แต่ก็ยังรู้สึกถึงพลังความเข้มข้น

C: I try to get the ambiguity not a lady or a man. But there is always a little hint, like her shoulder is a man shoulder,

ค: ผมพยายามที่จะแสดงให้เห็นถึงความไม่ชัดเจนว่าเป็นผู้หญิงหรือผู้ชาย แต่จะมีอะไรที่บ่งบอกเสมอ อย่างไหล่ที่เห็นเป็นไหล่ของผู้ชาย

S: I see

ส: เห็นแล้ว

C: It’s too big. Some people often ask me, how come you paint so many Thai women and men at night who have blond hair, blue eyes or yellow eyes. All Thais have dark hair and brown eyes or black eyes. And I say well actually in Bangkok night, a lot of people have dyed hair of different colors and they also put contact lens onto their eyes of various colors.

ค: ใหญ่ไป บางคนถามผมว่าทำไมจึงวาดภาพผู้หญิงและผู้ชายเวลากลางคืนมีผมสีทอง นัยน์ตาสีฟ้าหรือสีเหลือง คนไทยมีผมสีดำและนัยน์ตาสีน้ำตาลหรือดำ ผมบอกว่าในเวลากลางคืนนั้น คนกลางคืนจำนวนมากที่ย้อมผมเป็นสีต่างๆ และใส่คอนแท็คเลนส์ในตาทำให้มีหลากสี

S: And this is Viktor Bout, and this is in the bar.

ส: และนี่คือ นายวิคเตอร์ บูธ และนี่คือภาพในบาร์

C: This is Viktor Bout, the Russian spy, the day he was arrested and he was still kind of chubby. And he is kind of like a trapped rabbit, kind of an interesting character because you are not quite sure why he was being arrested and why there was so much focus on him. Everybody knew who he was and he actually worked for everybody, so no one was quite sure what the real story is.

ค: นี่คือ นายวิคเตอร์ บูธ สายลับรัสเซีย วันที่เขาถูกจับได้ เขายังท้วมอยู่ และเขาเป็นเหมือนกระต่ายติดกับ เป็นตัวละครที่น่าสนใจ เพราะคุณไม่แน่ใจว่าทำไม ทำไมเขาจึงถูกจับ ทำไมจึงมีคนให้ความสนใจกับเขามาก ทุกคนรู้ว่าเขาเป็นใคร เขาทำงานให้ทุกคนทุกฝ่าย แต่ไม่มีใครรู้ว่าเรื่องจริงคืออะไร

S: This is another scene in the bar.

ส: นี่เป็นฉากในบาร์

C: This is a scene from the bar in Soi Cowboy. People are impolite and rough, and noisy and rowdy. And there is a little bit of dirt everywhere. What I like to tell people is I dragged the painting out of the bar on the floor, picking up a lot of dirt from the bar.

ค: นี่เป็นฉากในบาร์ในซอยคาวบอย คนไม่สุภาพ หยาบ เสียงดัง และเอะอะตึงตัง มีความสกปรกทั่วไป ผมชอบบอกว่า ผมลากภาพวาดของผมบนพื้นบาร์ ทำให้สิ่งสกปรกติดขึ้นมา

S: This is my favorite, Chris.

ส: ภาพนี้เป็นภาพโปรดของผม

C: My favorite painting too. That’s a Bangkok ‘Soi Dog’ No.1, he is the big boss of Soi dogs on Soi 23. And he tells all the Soi dogs where they can sleep, which food cart they can eat from, and whose girlfriend they can have. And you are not quite sure whether he can see or not because his eyes are so beat up.

ค: เป็นภาพโปรดของผมเหมือนกัน เป็น “หมาข้างถนน” ตัวหนึ่งในกรุงเทพฯ “Soi Dog No.1” เบอร์หนึ่ง เป็น “จ่าฝูง” หัวหน้าหมาทั้งซอยในซอย 23 มันจะเป็นตัวที่บอกตัวอื่นว่าจะนอนที่ไหนได้ จะกินอาหารจากรถเข็นคันไหน จะเป็นแฟนกับใคร คุณเห็นแล้วจะไม่แน่ใจว่ามันเองมองเห็นหรือไม่ เพราะตาของมันเหมือนโดนตีจนปิด

S: But he looks human too in a way

ส: แต่ดูเหมือนคนในที

C: And he thinks he is beautiful because he never sees himself in a mirror. You see he is smiling and he thinks he really has a pretty smile. He has no idea that the smile is kind of scary.

ค: มันคิดว่าตัวเองสวยหล่อเพราะมันไม่เคยเห็นตัวเองในกระจก มันยิ้มและคิดว่าเป็นยิ้มที่เก๋ มันไม่เข้าใจว่ารอยยิ้มของมันค่อนข้างน่ากลัว

S: Is he still around?

ส: มันยังมีชีวิตอยู่

C: Yeah he is there every night. You know he got an amazing spirit. He doesn’t give up. He is happy every day and he likes being the boss. He has that Thai spirit. He survives and succeeds.

ค: มันอยู่ที่นั่นทุกคืน คุณรู้ไหมว่ามันมีสปิริตที่ดีมาก มันไม่เคยยอมแพ้ มีมีความสุขทุกวันและชอบเป็นเจ้านายใหญ่ มันมีสิปริตรความเป็นไทย อยู่รอดและประสบความสำเร็จ

S: How about this one? This looks famous.

ส: และภาพนี้ ดูคุ้นเคย

C: This one is the cover of a well-known book in Thailand, by Christopher Moore. It’s a novel called ‘The Corruptionist.’ The painting is supposed to be a man whose intent is entirely evil and bad. Unlike a good Buddhist, he doesn’t want to do any good deeds. He only wants to do bad deeds. And he enjoys doing bad deeds and he enjoys corrupting everybody around him into doing bad deeds. So he is called ‘The Corruptionist.’

ค: ภาพนี้เป็นภาพน่าปกของหนังสือดังในประเทศไทย เขียนโดยคริสโตเฟอร์ มัวร์ เป็นนิยายเรื่อง ‘The Corruptionist’ โดยภาพจะเป็นผู้ชายที่มีแต่ความตั้งใจที่ชั่วร้ายและความไม่ดี แตกต่างจากชาวพุทธที่ดี เขาไม่ต้องการทำดี ต้องการแต่จะทำเลว และ “คอรัป” ทุกคน ทำให้ทุกคนรอบตัวเขาทำชั่ว เขาจึงถูกเรียกว่า “ผู้สร้างความชั่ว”

S: You have been painting like this for quite a while now, are you going to change your style, you going to change your subject?

ส: คุณวาดภาพมาค่อนข้างนานแล้ว คิดจะเปลี่ยนรูปแบบสไตล์ หรือตัวละครบ้างหรือไม่

C: Well, I have actually done some other paintings. In the show there are a couple of flower paintings which are quite different. I started doing those for my mother because she kept telling her friends that I was a painter but she didn’t dare show them any of the paintings. Unfortunately, when I showed her the flowers, the flowers also looked like they are from the Bangkok night.

ค: จริงๆแล้วผมวาดภาพอย่างอื่นด้วย ในงานแสดงนี้มีภาพดอกไม้หลายภาพซึ่งค่อนข้างแตกต่าง ผมเริ่มวาดภาพดอกไม้ให้คุณแม่ เพราะเธอชอบไปบอกเพื่อนๆว่าผมเป็นจิตรกรแต่เธอไม่กล้าเอาภาพผลงานผมไปให้ เพื่อนๆดู แต่เมื่อผมเอาภาพดอกไม้ไปให้คุณแม่ ดอกไม้เหล่านั้นก็ยังดูว่ามาจากกรุงเทพยามค่ำคืน

S: So you still have curiosity and you want to explore the Bangkok night more

ส: แสดงว่ายังติดใจ และจะสำรวจชีวิตกลางคืนในกรุงเทพต่อ

C: I have been doing some paintings out in Singapore and some paintings in Phnom Penh.

ค: ผมวาดภาพที่สิงคโปร์ และพนมเปญ

S: At the night time?

ส: ในเวลากลางคืน?

C: Yes, Phnom Penh Noir. I spend a few months every year back at the coast of Maine and do some paints on the coast of Maine. But I think the Bangkok night is a good setting. It’s such a big setting and so diverse, dealing with the human behavior and human personality.

ค: ครับเป็น “พนมเปญนัวร์” และผมใช้เวลาหลายเดือนทุกปีกลับไปอยู่ที่ชายทะเลมลรัฐเมน (สหรัฐอเมริกา) เพื่อวาดภาพชายทะเลเมน แต่ผมคิดเสมอว่ากรุงเทพยามค่ำคืนน่าสนใจ เป็นพื้นที่ที่ใหญ่ มีความหลากหลาย มีพฤติกรรมและบุคลิกของมนุษย์ที่ต้องเข้าใจ

S: If anyone wants to come see the paintings, they can come here at Koi Gallery

ส: หากใครต้องการชมผลงานมาได้ที่ “ก้อยแกลอรี่”

C: Koi Art Gallery on Sukhumvit Soi 31 and it’s a beautiful art gallery, beautifully designed by the owner-manager, Koi. It’s a very pleasant place to go and there are coffee shops nearby. Nice visit.

ค: “ก้อยแกลอรี่” อยู่ในซอยสุขุมวิท 31 เป็นแกลอรี่ที่สวยมาก ออกแบบโดยเจ้าของและผู้จัดการคือ คุณก้อย เป็นที่ที่น่ามาเยี่ยมชม และมีร้านกาแฟใกล้ๆด้วย น่ามาเที่ยว

S: But of course if anyone wants to look at all your paintings, it's this all in this book ("Navigating the Bangkok Noir")?

ส: และแน่นอน หากใครต้องการดูผลงานทั้งหมดของคุณ นี่คือหนังสือ

C: The book is actually less than 10% of my paintings. There are about a hundred paintings in the book. It is published by a Singapore company, Marshall-Cavendish, and being distributed all over the world through Amazon.com called ‘Navigating the Bangkok Noir’ and it has paintings from the Bangkok night and the idea of the title is it navigates the reader through the Bangkok night where he emerges at the other end of the journey safe and intact.

ค: ในหนังสือเล่มนี้ มีผลงานของผมไม่ถึงร้อยละ 10 ของงานทั้งหมด โดยมีประมาณ 100 ภาพ พิมพ์โดยสำนักพิมพ์สิงคโปร์มาแชล์-คาเวนดิช และจัดจำหน่ายทั่วโลกผ่านอเมซอนดอทคอม ชื่อว่า ‘Navigating the Bangkok Noir’ มีภาพจากกรุงเทพในเวลากลางคืน และเบื้องหลังความคิดชื่อหนังสือคือผู้อ่านสามารถท่องเที่ยวกรุงเทพยามราตรี และเมื่อจบเล่มเขาผ่านมาด้วยความปลอดภัยและครบ 32

S: So I should turn to the last page and see..

ส: ถ้าเช่นนั้น ผมเปิดไปท้ายเล่มเลย…

C: No, you have to follow the trail all the way through and once you read this book you are immune to the Bangkok night, and you never become lost and never become confused.

ค: ไม่ได้ครับ คุณต้องไปตามเส้นทางทะลุปรุโปร่ง และเมื่อคุณอ่านหนังสือเล่มนี้ คุณจะมีภูมิคุ้มกันต่อกรุงเทพยามราตรี ไม่มีการหลงทาง ไม่มีความสับสน

S: So it’s not just a catalogue of your paintings but a story too

ส: จึงไม่ใช่หนังสือที่รวบรวมภาพต่างๆ แต่มีเรื่องเล่า

C: With each painting, when I do the painting I kind of think in terms of a little story about the human drama is going on in the painting.

ค: ทุกภาพ เมื่อผมวาดขึ้น ผมจะคิดถึงเรื่องเกี่ยวกับชีวิตคนที่กำลังดำเนินในภาพ

S: And this is your writing too, write what you are thinking in terms of painting the picture

ส: และข้อเขียนของคุณ เขียนสิ่งที่คุณคิดและสะท้อนในภาพ

C: Right, I used to be in the movie business so I think of the paintings as stories

ค: ครับ ผมเคยอยู่ในธุรกิจสร้างภาพยนตร์ จึงคิดถึงภาพวาดเป็นเรื่องเล่า

S: This is like a story board

ส: เหมือนเป็น สตอรี่บอร์ด

C: In a sense it is like a storyboard for the Bangkok night

ค: ในความคิดหนึ่งก็เป็นเหมือนสตอรี่บอร์ดของกรุงเทพยามราตรี

S: I hope someone takes it and makes a movie out of it

ส: ผมหวังว่าจะมีใครเอาไปสร้างภาพยนตร์

C: It would be a great movie but I don’t think anyone is ever going to make it

ค: คงจะเป็นภาพยนตร์ที่ดี แต่ผมคิดว่าคงไม่มีใครเอาไปสร้าง

Bangkok Post's Sean Trembath Interviews Chris Coles

View from the dark side: Bangkok Noir artist Chris Coles has a unique perspective of the city

(May 12, 2011 - Bangkok Post - Reporter: Sean Trembath)

The Bangkok that Chris Coles paints is not the one you see on postcards. He focuses on the darker side, and the widely diverse collection of people who populate the city at night.

Chris Coles with one of his works.

Coles is heavily involved in the Bangkok Noir movement, a collection of artists, writers and film-makers whose work is grounded in what some would call the seedier side of Bangkok. He paints bar girls, sex tourists, people new to the nightlife and those for whom it is only life they've got left.

Rather than straight portraiture, Coles employs a colourful Expressionist style reminiscent of early 20th century French painters such as Matisse. The colours evoke the lights and the chaos that characterise the establishments Coles draws his inspiration from.

Earlier this year Coles released Navigating the Bangkok Noir, a book collecting paintings done from 2004 to 2007. He continues to paint, and plans to release more books in coming years.

Coles sat down with us to discuss coming to Thailand, developing the Noir style, and the different ways people look at Bangkok.

How did you get to Bangkok?

I first came to Bangkok in the mid-90s. I used to work in Hollywood, and I came here as a production executive on a really big, stupid movie called Cutthroat Island. I had never been in Asia before, and it was a great experience.

A self portrait by Coles.

The movie itself was just awful, but getting to know Thailand and Southeast Asia was a life-changing experience. I got to know a lot of Thais - we had hundreds working for us - so I started coming back here to visit.

Towards the end of the '90s the financial crisis was going on. It was 55 baht to a dollar and there were 600,000 condos for sale in Bangkok. I was going to buy a car when I got back to Los Angeles - I was still doing movies then - and I said, "Well that's stupid. Instead of buying a car why don't I buy a condo in Bangkok?"

When did you move here permanently and start painting?

I was going back and forth, still doing movies, but once my daughter finished high school in Los Angeles, I decided that I'd done enough movies to last me three lifetimes. I'd always painted as a hobby, so I decided to do nothing but paint. The Bangkok condo became my studio.

When did you start painting in the Bangkok Noir style?

I knew a lot of the expat writers, especially Christopher G. Moore. He and I would discuss various things. One day, I had been at the Kinokuniya bookstore looking through art books of the German Expressionists who had painted Berlin nightlife in the 1930s. The paintings would be somewhere like Ludwigstrasse in Berlin in 1930, and I'd say, "Oh, this looks just like Soi 4 at midnight on a Friday night".

I asked Chris if he knew any expats who were painting the Bangkok night, and he'd been living here for years and said he couldn't think of one. Then I asked some Thai friends about how many Thai artists were painting the Bangkok night, and there were very few. In Berlin, there were thousands of guys painting the Berlin nightlife. In Paris in 1900 all the artists lived in Montmartre, which was the centre of Paris nightlife. And they were painting all that stuff - Picasso, Matisse, Gauguin.

So I said to Chris, "Maybe I should do it" and he said I should. I started using the Bangkok night as a setting to do these Expressionist style paintings, which use a very unrealistic colour scheme and a lot of distortion and exaggeration to make something dramatic and exciting and more interesting than it might be in actual fact.

Do you think Bangkok Noir is the most accurate way to view Bangkok?

I think any large complex city like New York, London, Paris, Bangkok, Shanghai, Saigon, you can take various views of the city, because the city has a lot of different dimensions to it. And they all have their legitimacy. I don't think there is any single view which can encompass a large complex city.

The Tourist Authority Thailand view - serene, exotic, harmonious, tranquil, peaceful Bangkok - is fair enough. You can have that view, and take photographs of it and make it look that way, but that's really only one view, whereas the Bangkok Noir view is another, taking the same city. We sometimes make jokes about the TAT view, but we don't say it's not a legitimate view, it's just another way of looking at Bangkok.

Everyone has their own reason for consuming different views of a city they live in. Some people like the fairytale version of the city because it makes them feel better. In LA, someone might think Disneyland is wonderful, whereas I like the Port of Los Angeles, with all its industrial machines. It's the same with New York, London, Paris, and Bangkok.

What does Bangkok provide for a creatively minded expat?

The expats - who are not necessarily doing art or novels, but also blogs, journalism, or something sort of interesting - they come to Bangkok with an open mind, and they want to get to know modern Asia. They see stuff they never would have imagined would have been here.

They start reading books, they start meeting people. They go out of their way to meet diverse people, not just expats from their own little world: Thais, Asians, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Arabs.

Their whole world is starting to change as an expat who has come to Bangkok in 2011 because they are open to the experience. They had some need inside them for a more diverse, more interesting world that they wanted to be part of. And Bangkok can give that to them, and can give them a whole new life experience which takes them some place in their life they never would have gone to otherwise.

Bangkok has so many distractions. There are so many things that are so easy to just go and do and have fun, that in order to get something done here, something of note, you have to really focus, and sort of ask yourself what do you really want to do here, in your time on Earth, and in Bangkok.

That self-creation and self-imagination that takes place among a certain group of expats here who end up doing really interesting things in Bangkok is part of what makes what they do interesting. They came here, accepted the challenge of modern Bangkok, engaged with modern Bangkok, engaged with modern Bangkok in a creative and intelligent way, and made something out of their experience here bigger than what they would have done otherwise in their life, and bigger than what would have happened in Bangkok if they hadn't been here.

CNNGo Tim Footman's piece on Chris Coles & the Bangkok Noir

Rainy Season Suzy Wong Bar - Chris Coles

“Bangkok Noir” has become something of a buzzword in recent months, although more cynical minds might deduce that it’s little more than an attempt to spin the work of local crime writers such as Christopher G. Moore and John Burdett into an authentic genre, bracketing their books with the likes of James Ellroy or even Raymond Chandler and hoping a little of the critical credibility rubs off.

Artist Chris Coles is happy to be seen as part of the movement, to the extent that his new book of his paintings is called “Navigating the Bangkok Noir.” (See the above gallery for a small sample.)

In his hands, the Bangkok night becomes “a Darwinistic and brutal stage on which humans from all over the planet, rich and poor, dark and white, tall and short, fat and slim, civilized and uncouth, intelligent and incredibly dumb, come together to mingle, interact, devour, be devoured, stalk prey and to be stalked by predators.”

Chris Coles' damaged denizens of Bangkok’s nightlife are highlighted in "Navigating the Bangkok Noir."

It’s rather different from the Land of Smiles mythology peddled by the government and the tourist authorities -- the mythology that holds topless Songkran dancers to be completely antithetical to Thai culture and morality – and indeed from the majority of Bangkok-based artists.

For a real exercise in contrasts, check out his exhibition at the Koi Gallery on Sukhumwit 31, which hangs his works alongside the pastoral confections of Anita Suputipong.

But Coles’s work is also distinct from that of Christopher Moore and his fellow writers, who are forced by their chosen genre to tie the atmosphere down to a plot, to add a little action and danger to their depictions of Krung Thep at night. The results sometimes feel as if they’ve been designed to flatter the white-knight fantasies of their male, farang readers, for whom real life can still be a bit mundane, even in this city.

Moore writes the foreword to Coles’s book, and compares the painter to Toulouse-Lautrec, but this misses the mark a little. Toulouse-Lautrec’s pictures of prostitutes were tender observations that focused on the women’s off-duty moments -- sleeping, bathing, dreaming.

Coles is an Expressionist, though; his bargirls are in the tradition of the underweight, glassy-eyed Viennese hookers immortalized by Egon Schiele. Moreover, his combination of garish colors and thick black lines suggests the styles of Georges Rouault and Marc Chagall, both of whom were influenced by stained-glass windows in places of worship.

In his hands the damaged denizens of Bangkok’s nightlife achieve a transcendent aura, the profane becoming sacred.

Behind the sad, garish smiles

That said, Coles doesn’t impose an explicit narrative or moral on his images of Bangkok nightlife. What he sets out to do is “to accept and understand that as humans, even in the year 2011, we still harbor some very primitive, reptile-like qualities that lie not too far beneath our modern and ‘civilized’ exterior surface.”

Each image stands alone, a single event in a single night, take it or leave it. His deadpan annotations put a few names to faces, a little context for those who might not be au fait with Nana or Cowboy, but stops short of fleshing out a full biography for these damaged creatures.

He doesn’t idealize or idolize the bargirls, but is always sympathetic to their situations, always keen to find out where they came from, what brought them here, to see behind the sad, garish smiles.

He is more ambivalent about their clients, who come over as endearingly naïve at best, monstrous and controlling at worst.

That said, Coles doesn’t impose an explicit narrative or moral on his images of Bangkok nightlife. Each image stands alone, a single event in a single night, take it or leave it.

Coles is a good painter, but more importantly (and more surprisingly), "Navigating the Bangkok Noir" works as a book in its own right, rather than just a glorified exhibition catalogue.

The closest comparison is with Philip Cornwel-Smith’s warm and wacky "Very Thai: Everyday Popular Culture," to which it acts as a sort of grim, evil twin. Coles illuminates images from the bleaker, seedier side of Bangkok life, but ultimately it’s up to you, the reader, to do the work and create a story.

"Navigating the Bangkok Noir" is published by Marshall Cavendish, Singapore and is also available on Amazon & Noqstore.

For more on Chris Coles, visit his website: www.chriscolesgallery.com

An Album of Expressionist Art: ‘Navigating the Bangkok Noir’ as Reviewed by Voicu Mihnea Simandan

Many people have asked me how it was like to grow up in the Eastern Block, behind the Iron Curtain. I told all of them that, as a kid, life was good. I mean, yes, food ratios, lack of entertainment on TV, and the general grimness of people on the street become obvious issues once we were exposed to the “opulence” of the West. But, until 1989, I didn’t know that anything better existed.

Probably one of the greatest achievements of the Communist regime in Romania was that, because there was nothing else to do, people read and practiced sports. It is true that we didn’t have access to the “subversive” literature of the West, but my father’s library was full of books and art albums, everything from Dostoevsky to van Gogh.

This “bad habit” of reading books and flicking through art album stayed with me until today. It was thus a great pleasure when Chris Coles’s album of expressionist art Navigating the Bangkok Noir arrived in my mail. Published by Marshall Cavendish in 2011, the album comprises of one hundred close-ups of the Bangkok nightlife. All of them are watercolours on paper and were created by the artist between 2004 and 2007.

Chris Coles is an artist and filmmaker who spends his creative time between two cities of angles: Los Angeles and Bangkok. For the people of Bangkok, Chris Coles’s work represents the faces of the good, the bad, and the unfortunate who negotiate on a daily basis a living in a Bangkok different than the one usually advertised on the Tourist Authority of Thailand brochures. It is the Bangkok of the red light districts. It is the Bangkok Noir.

The album couldn’t have had a better introduction than the one signed by Christopher G. Moore, another noir champion stationed in Bangkok. In The Bangkok Noir Movement, the essay that opens Coles’s album, Moore looks at what noir means for us, the residents of Bangkok, and places the artist’s paintings in its context: “modern pop art with contemporary pulp story telling.”

The vignettes Chris Coles wrote to accompany each of his noir paintings take us deeper into the darkness of a Bangkok I know very little of. The protagonists of Chris’s paintings are people he met or observed in various “hot” locations, from clubs mostly frequented by old timers to the tourist orientated ones on Soi Cowboy. A special place among his “subjects” are the ladies of the night, most of them dancing in brief clothing at the pole or waiting their first (or last) customer of the day.

My two favourite paintings are “Washington Square Girl,” the portrait of a “working” girl whose harsh life back home in the village just seems to jump out of the picture; and “Wild and Crazy Guy,” the epitomizing image of your run-of-the-mill tourist who, back home leads a safe and socially acceptable life, but once he lands in Bangkok, he is “ready to hunt large animals with a club and drag women back to his cave.”

With the recent publication of Bangkok Noir, a collection of dark short stories edited by Christopher G. Moore, plus Navigating the Bangkok Noir, which is already available in major bookstores throughout Thailand, the noir movement has taken a strong foothold in this “Land of Smiles” where according to some, everything is wonderful and people are always smiling. Well, thanks to Chris Coles’s acute eye and artistic talent, we now know for sure that behind all the glitter and flashy lights, there’s a human drama which, on most occasions, we like to ignore or even forget it exists.

James Newman Reviews "Navigating the Bangkok Noir"

Ratchada Fishbowl

At first glance I thought negotiating would be a better transitive than navigating to describe the Bangkok bar-scene. The way one negotiates an obstacle course, or say a bar fine. A metaphorical obstacle course, fraught with dangers, the hurdles and the prices oscillate in accordance with the negotiators strengths, weaknesses, experience and beer Singha consumption.

Then I got it!

Nobody truly understands the city! She does not really understand herself! She is a new city, two hundred years and counting and full of a hodgepodge of crazies from around the world. The word navigate spells uncharted territory. It is a better word than negotiate. Bangkok is for the tourists and the sex workers that find themselves washed up on her muddy banks a city yet to be navigated fully. These are the subjects of Chris Coles’ paintings. Women working in bars. Wenches as lost and as mean and as cruel as happy as the men drinking in those bars. It’s a long dusty, winding road from Isaan. A long flight back to the west. Twice as long if you're going back. Back empty-handed.

Bangkok noir is the end of the dream, the horrific memoir, the realization that what has motivated us for so long may not have been wholesome for the soul, the liver, nor the pocketbook. Bangkok noir is the waking up in a hot tub with a gaggle of nubile North-eastern women and wondering where it all went wrong. Bangkok noir is the hundredth client serviced in as many hours in a downtown goldfish bowl. The flicker of hope in a soi dog’s eye. The Arab’s bent dagger. The bargirl with a heart of gold. The washed-out mamasan.

This is noir.

Bangkok noir is what it is because it isn’t ever what it seems.

I arrived here ten years ago at the age of twenty-five. I foolishly considered my previous incarnation as a Lloyds of London litigation broker would prove helpful in keeping afloat above the scams and the scum and the schemes of the city. I was wrong. I naively considered romance and commerce to be two separate items. I would learn... For the women of the night they are inseparable and absolute... Money and love... There is no such thing as love without money and I’ll say whatever you want and do whatever you please as long as the lolly keeps on coming, honey...

One of my favourite pieces in the book is a Lover’s Quarrel.

Coles describes the scene.

He’s still young and naive, learning how to live. She’s spent the last five years working in a Bangkok bar, at least three lifetime compared to him. Both twenty-three, they’re not from different planets but separate solar systems, intersecting in the Bangkok night.

It’s these descriptions alongside the paintings that bring Navigating the Bangkok Noir to life. We can cook up our own stories from the paintings, but what Chris Coles does is describe them in a way that really hits the spot. All any artist in any given medium can ever hope to achieve is to show us what we already knew, or didn’t know that we knew. But somehow we knew it. Coles achieves this with each piece in the book. The thrill of realization is overwhelming. I had seen many of the paintings before the book was published and had perhaps seen some of the paintings before they were painted. This is the magic of Bangkok noir.

The book begins by an excellent introduction by Christopher G. Moore – ‘Noir is more that paintings laced with plumes of cigarette smoke, bottles of beer, angry tarts and dissolute drunks’ – It is and it isn’t. Moore concludes – ‘It is a universe full of clashing colours, dramatic contrasts, jagged lines, extremes of behaviour and personality, mankind tilted on a primitive edge.’

The dilemma that Chris Coles brings to light in his work is that of the struggle between the sexes and the cultures of desperately different wants and needs satisfying each other, or not, in the neon-lit dollar-hungry underworld of Bangkok. It is a world of abuse where nobody knows who is abusing who. Who holds the power? Is it the banker from New Jersey or the hooker from Ubon Thani? Or is it her Thai boyfriend, or the parents back home? His job, his wife? The weather?

This book is not only one of the finest art books to have been published thus far this year, it also points the way ahead for a colony of Bangkok artists to produce work that can be appreciated globally. A Bangkok art movement could be afoot. I hope it is. Coles is leading the way.

Let’s join him.

Suranand Vejjajiva Interviews Chris Coles for TNN 2 TV

Quite an informative interview of Chris Coles by Suranand Vejjajiva for his TNN 2 Thai TV show in April 2011.........

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygxkIb-s3D0

BKK 101 Magazine's Steven Pettifor interviews Chris Coles

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BKK 101 Magazine's Steven Pettifor interviews Chris Coles about his April Show at Koi Gallery in Bangkok, his new book of paintings titled NAVIGATING THE BANGKOK NOIR, and how he puts together his paintings from the Bangkok Night.

by Steven Pettifor - BKK 101 Magazine - April 2011

Known among Bangkok’s expat clique for his expressive depictions of the capital’s adult nightlife, Thailand-based American painter Chris Coles has paired up with Thai artist Anita Suputipong for his latest exhibition at Koi Art Gallery.

Celebrating the recent publication of his new book Navigating the Bangkok Noir, Coles’ raw vividness contrasts with Anita’s more tempered evocations of life in the metropolis.

Q: Bangkok's nightlife has been referenced in many books, films, and artworks. What fresh perspective do you bring to such a milieu?

Many books, films & artworks already out there that make use of Bangkok’s nightlife and either present it in a “glamorous” way or an “erotic/pleasure palace” way. They sort of go along with a lot of popular clichés and commonly accepted notions about the scene.

A number of my paintings from the world of Bangkok’s nightlife, are more portraits of the people inhabiting the “scene” rather than the “scene” itself. In these portraits, using clashing colors, distortion, an expressionist style of presentation, I try to capture not only the person’s surface and “face” but also what’s going on inside. For instance, while they might be “smiling” & “looking happy” on the surface, inside they are not “smiling” and, in fact, not “happy”.

In the paintings of actual scenes from the Bangkok nightlife, the bars, restaurants, discos, music/KTV places, etc., I also try to get beneath the surface presentation, the “nightlife/show business” illusion that has been ingeniously and carefully constructed and which serves as a complex, powerful marketing platform with which to attract, sell to and ensnare the “customer” in order to maintain the Bangkok nightlife’s enormous revenue flow.

I deconstruct the lighting, atmosphere, how the scene is populated/staffed, the use of intense colors, patterns, mirrors, distortion and disorientation. I try to show the psychological and economic relationships that are being conjured up, the alienation, the confusion, the various human deficits that are being met, the near overwhelming flow of sensory information and the human struggles that are present and in play. Also, what it “feels like” to actually be there, inside, “backstage”, how the experience of being there is processed and “perceived”.

Despite Thailand being known as the “Land of Smiles” and almost all the Thailand tourist guidebooks/photobooks being filled with pretty images of Thai people smiling, in my nightlife paintings, there is almost no one who is actually smiling.

Q: Your depictions of Bangkok nightlife draw parallels to Paris in the late 19th century by artists such as Lautrec or Degas. Where do you see similarities and differences?

I very much draw inspiration from the French Fauvist & German Expressionist painters who used non-realistic and saturated clashing colors as well as a distorted unrealistic style in portraying the people and settings of Paris nightlife circa 1900 & Berlin nightlife in the 1920’s.

Q: How do you capture your subjects, through sketches, photographs, or from memory?

A lot of what I do is spend hours very careful observing both the people and settings in the Bangkok night.

Some bars/scenes might have over 3000 lighting sources of all kinds of colors, lots of them moving or constantly changing tone and intensity, often multiplied by static and moving mirrors. To understand the lighting and colors and how they’re working might take me several hours of intense visual observation and mental cataloguing. Gradually, I’ve developed an intuitive knowledge of the lighting and color effects which I use in almost all of my paintings.

There might be several hundred people present, performers, staff, customers and bystanders, all of them in a constant state of movement, an endlessly changing flow of interaction and relationships, each dressed in a certain way, each lit by the various moving light sources, each going through a series of actions, endlessly adapting and adjusting their attitude and demeanour. I listen to many conversations, sometimes I even ask questions, for instance, why something is being done in a certain way or what is someone trying to do.

The end result of all this observation is the formation of my ideas and vision, which is basically the Bangkok Nightlife scene as a sort of darwinistic, ferocious world full of struggle, alienation, tragedy, with occasional glimpses of beauty, hope and redemption.

Then, I go to work as a kind of visual scavenger/garbage collector, looking for possible elements and images which I can use to convey my vision.

I basically don’t discriminate or care where I get the visual bits and pieces, they come from my entire visual world, from tv, trash cans, a piece of paper off the street, memories false and real, fuzzy camera phone reference snaps, other painters, for instance some of the painters of Berlin nightlife in the 1920’s or the French painters of Paris nightlife circa 1900, sometimes I do sketches, sometimes I just make it all up, sometimes I work from collages, and sometimes a combination of all of the above.

Q: Your art could be read as exoticising Thailand.

I try to avoid completely “orientalising/exoticising” the Bangkok night scene and the Thai and Asian people who inhabit it. There is no “Oriental Gong” or “Fu Manchu” or “Inscrutable Asian” or “Thai Air Smiling/Wai-ing Stewardess”. The various people are presented as fully-dimensional and complex human beings who are full of hope, struggle, dreams and suffering, not as “glamorized objects” or “passive/submissives” or even as “victims”

Q: In what way do your paintings move beyond the typical sex industry laden associations of Bangkok nightlife?

I think my paintings go far beyond the typical Bangkok sex business clichés. The paintings de-construct the Bangkok nightlife/sex industry. They pull/tear/rip the nightlife machine/factory apart and reveal the inner mechanics and personalities. My paintings do not “glamorize” or “eroticize” the nightlife. In fact, someone once pointed out to me that there is a very strong Buddhist message underlying most of my paintings of the Bangkok nightlife and that is:

“Desire is an illusion…….”

In my paintings I try to show what the elements are that go into creating and maintaining this very large and well-developed “illusion” or spectacle, the very high level of skill that goes into its marketing and its power.

Q: Have you exhausted the capital’s nightlife as a subject yet?

The Bangkok nightlife industry/scene is gigantic, employing directly and indirectly hundreds of thousands of people at all its different levels. It’s a significant percentage not only of Bangkok’s economic structure but of the entire Thailand economic output. It is full of color, human drama, interesting personalities and there is an infinity of stuff to paint.

But sometimes, I just can’t take anymore psychologically and physically and I stop.

For instance, I want to do a series of paintings based around the “Super Noir Arabs/Africans-in-Bangkok” scene which is centered around Sukhumvit Soi 3 and the Grace Hotel. I’ve spent many hours in that area on Friday and Saturday nights between midnight and 3AM when the area hits its peak of activity and crowds. There are so many strong colors, so many weird people, so much struggle, suffering, alienation. It is ripe fruit waiting to be plucked and painted.

But even for me, the “Bangkok Noir artist”, it is just too much Noir, too hopeless, too nihilistic, too lacking in any element of “entertainment” or “fun”, that I find myself just wanting to go home, take a really long hot shower and go to sleep.

Q: What will be your next focus?

I’ve been working a series of Noir type paintings set in Singapore which at first seems to be an unlikely place to find much “Noir” but once you dig past the surface version of Singapore, you discover there is a lot more there than just the shiny hi-rises and 5-star shopping malls. To me at least, it seems a much more “lonely” city than Bangkok, so the style of the paintings is less “Berlin 1920’s” and more sort of in the Edward Hopper direction. And color palette is more muted.

As a result of my last show being held at Liam’s Gallery in Pattaya, I spent some time there and was very surprised at Pattaya’s unexpected diversity and dramatic expansion, especially the tens of thousands of Russians, Iranians, Gulf State Arabs, South Asians and tourists from China. On a typical Friday or Saturday night, Walking Street has100,000 visitors and they are from almost every country on earth, all income levels and in unexpected social groupings.

For instance, a Russian family of four, Mom, Dad and two young children, having their photo taken standing next to a six foot tall Thai ladyboy. A tour group of female high school teachers from Chengdu, wide-eyed and in wonder at the ongoing Walking Street circus. A bunch of middle-class families from India, looking for a seafood restaurant amidst the chaos. Fierce looking Gulf State Arab Wahabis parading down Walking Street with their newly-acquired Thai girlfriends. Not to speak of the newest trend, ladyboys dressed up in Burqas.

Great neon, chaotic mixing of colors, music, situations. Plenty of raw visual stuff, more than enough for only one artist in one lifetime. So I’ve been doing mainly portraits of the different types of people who are wandering around rather than wider view paintings of the “scene”.

I’ve started researching/prepping for a series of Noir paintings to be set in Phnom Penh which is a very different city than Bangkok with Khmers/Cambodians very different than Thais. Different color palette, feel, atmosphere, a place in the midst of very rapid change with a lot of odd juxtapositions, interesting locations, an edgy quality, a lot of light and darkness.

I am also working on my 2nd book to follow the 1st one that is being launched on April 1st in Bangkok (NAVIGATING THE BANGKOK NOIR – Marshall Cavendish Singapore) and I will also keep working on my series of expressionist style flower paintings and some paintings set on the coast of Maine where I’m originally from and where I spend a few months every year.

http://bangkok101.com/2011/04/qa-chris-coles/

Colour of Day/Colour of Night, Apr 1 – 30
Koi Art Gallery Bangkok,
43/12 Soi Sukhumvit 31 Sawaddee |
02-662-3218 | www.koiartgallerybangkok.com