My favorite paintings are pretty much all by the various Expressionists, mostly from early 1900's Germany, often Berlin, especially the Berlin Night…
And my style of painting is similar to the various Expressionist artists such as Beckman, Emil Nolde, Otto Dix, George Grosz, Kirchner....…
I like using distortion, sharply contrasting, often rather ugly images, disharmonious colors and a rough technique...
Many of my paintings are set in the Bangkok Night which I see as similar to the early 1900's Berlin Night....
And my work is considered to be part of what's called the Bangkok Noir movement...which consists of various authors, musicians, film-makers and artists who also use the Bangkok Night and its cast of characters as a backdrop for their work....
To me, the Bangkok Night is a
vast, dark, edgy and noir universe…it has a powerful density and
velocity, a kind of Dark Energy…… ..
It’s full of nihilistic motifs and themes…populated by many different kinds of people……
Who, in the universe of the
Bangkok Night, are often revealed in ways they might not have “intended” or
“wanted” to be revealed…in ways that might contradict
the persona, or version of themselves, that they project or present in their
“ordinary” or so-called “normal” lives……
Their “daytime” lives, when
they’re suited up for work, constrained and subdued in all sorts of ways that
are necessary for them to survive, replicate and succeed in terms of careers, families,
financial security and so on.....
Like the Paris and Berlin
Nights in the early 1900's, the “Bangkok Night” is a world without daylight or
sunshine....it’s all about darkness,
glowing neon, and various man-made and multi-colored lighting: florescent,
blinking, reflected and otherwise……..
There are multiple and constantly
over-lapping music tracks, sound FX…all different kinds of women,
men and ladyboys……dressed up and costumed for the night, not for the
day…….
Thousands of them, tens of
thousands, hundreds of thousands…..over the months and years, millions….of every size and shape,
beautiful, not beautiful, young, not-so-young, from Thailand,
Asia and every country on earth.....
Density and velocity are key
elements in the Bangkok
Night......without density and velocity (kind of like one of those gigantic Black
Holes in Deep Space), the Bangkok Night would lose much of its power, its
brightness, its attraction, its ability to pull in millions of people….
Another element in the
Bangkok Night are the extreme situations, often very personal, dramatic and
acted out in strange ways in full public view……many of which I use as raw
material for my paintings….
In which I try to convey not
only the Bangkok Night's illusion of excitement and desire, but also the
poignancy.....the ugliness……the momentary glimpses of
wonder and beauty……
And the enormous loss of
human potentials, damaged lives and tragedy..…the Bangkok Night is full of
ambiguities, every kind of shading….nothing is ever quite
clear…..it’s complex, multi-layered….
Sometimes, it has an ironic
overlay…sometimes a touch of “noir”
humor lurking somewhere underneath…in my paintings, the men,
women, ladyboys and even the soi dogs are portrayed at their best, in-between
and worst……
Usually caught up in a
Darwinist dog-eat-dog setting…desiring….being
desired……wanting….being wanted…compulsively, sometimes
mindlessly, devouring or being devoured…consuming or being consumed.…
It’s a world where only the
strongest and luckiest avoid being sucked into the vortex….and manage to survive
completely intact.......
Sometimes, even smiling....but what kind of smile....and for what reason.....
Labels: 20x20, Bangkok, bangkok noir, Chris Coles, Expressionist art, nightlife, PechaKucha
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