Tuesday, July 05, 2022

German Expressionism and the Bangkok Night

My book, GERMAN EXPRESSIONISM AND THE BANGKOK NIGHT, Berlin 1920's nightlife re-incarnated in modern Bangkok, available on Amazon dot com.....
Bangkok Boys Town
Renoir Club
Thaniya Plaza
Soi Cowboy
Poseidon Massage Palace Ratchada
Lady from the Bangkok Night
Sexy Bar
Tilac Agogo
Renoir Club Soi 33
Spirit House Japanese KTV

https://www.amazon.com/German-Expressionism-Bangkok-Night-Chris/dp/1797613723/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1658164114&sr=8-1

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Wednesday, March 30, 2022

One Night in Bangkok in Singapore

My book of Expressionist-Style paintings from the Bangkok Night, ONE NIGHT IN BANGKOK IN SINGAPORE, is now available on Amazon dot com............as a quality paperback or e-book....The ONE NIGHT IN BANGKOK IN SINGAPORE Show was part of Singapore's LGBT IndigNation Festival....
Bangkok Boys Town
Bangkok Boys Town
Gay Arab Sex Tourist
Climax After Hours Club Sukhumvit Soi 11
Gay Tourist at Short Time Hotel
Thai Rent Boy Bangkok Bangkok Boys Town
Rent Boy Surawong
Ladyboy Cascade Bar Nana Plaza
Ladyboy at Spasso Bar
Ladyboy Beer Bar Patpong 2
2 Ladyboys at CM2 Club
Chris Newsom Editor Marshall Cavandish Singapore on Opening Night
Ladyboy at Thermae Club
Ruby Shang, Head of Clinton Foundation AIDS Foundation in Asia on Opening Night


https://www.amazon.com/Night-Bangkok-Singapore-Chris-Coles/dp/1795619481/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1659274278&sr=1-1
 

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Monday, January 04, 2016

Bangkok Boys Town............

"Bangkok Boys Town" - Chris Coles


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Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Bangkok Boys Town...........

"Bangkok Boys Town" - Chris Coles


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Friday, October 25, 2013

Tourist from China Bangkok Boys Town

"Tourist from China Bangkok Boys Town" - Chris Coles


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Monday, September 03, 2012

"Creatures of the Night" article from The Nation


Nice article/interview in The Nation, Tuesday, October 16th, on "Paintings from the Bangkok Night" show opening at FCCT on Friday October 19th, 7pm.......
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Creatures of the night

Artist Chris Coles focuses on the bright lights and dark pulse of Bangkok's infamous nightlife

Sometimes it takes an outsider to see the appeal of places or things that locals can be blind to. For Chris Coles, an American artist who has lived in Bangkok on and off for more than a decade, the urban jungle is the source of his inspiration.

Coles worked in the movie business for a quarter of a century and travelled widely before buying a condo in Bangkok in the late '90s. He says his time in the film industry, with set designers such as Stuart Craig and filmmakers like Roger Deakins, heightened his appreciation and awareness of the sights he encountered in Southeast Asia.

"It was a real eye-opener the first time coming here - visually dense and the energy here. I got really interested in modern Asia. For a Westerner, it's such a different universe."

Most farang, he says, are not used to all the motion and density they initially encounter in the Thai capital. "Thais are quite relaxed and at ease in a lot of dense visual information - holes in the sidewalk, motorcycles, soi dogs, etc - but it overloads your senses. Most Westerners are not used to that in the first year here."

For Coles, whose mother was an artist, just having a meal or a drink in some notorious nightlife areas can be a rich visual feast. "For an artist, it's like sitting next to Niagara Falls."

He talks about art with passion. He is big on the German expressionists such as Emil Nolde, who painted scenes in Berlin in the 1920s, and sees similarities to modern-day Bangkok, which he rates as "the real capital of Southeast Asia" - a city of multiple cultural streams, great infrastructure, and "tremendous visual intensity".

Coles uses colour with similar boldness - bright, vivid images, with characters and scenes from "the noir side of the Bangkok night".

His book, "Navigating the Bangkok Noir", published last year by Marshall Cavendish, portrays the diverse underbelly of life that makes the capital so spicy and colourful.

He makes it sound like a hot tom yum of all the things conservative locals would stir clear of - as his book says: "bargirls, punters, ladyboys, rentboys, and the assorted cast of thugs, scammers, traffickers, dealers, perverts, hitmen and the endless stream of fugitives from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Europe and North America, not to mention Thailand itself".

Coles grew up in a fishing village in Maine on the US Atlantic coast. At 17 he caught a bus to Los Angeles on the West Coast and worked in a Mexican restaurant. The following year he was on a pineapple plantation in Hawaii. Shortly after that he was in the West Australian outback, before returning to the US to study literature at Brown University. He journeyed around Kenya before travelling to London, teaching, and then taking a course at Britain's national film school.

In the late '70s he got into the movie business, working as a production manager on the Superman movies with Christopher Reeve.

By 1995, when he came to Phang Nga to work on "Cutthroat Island", he was a studio executive. Directed by Renny Harlin, the movie starring Geena Davis and Matthew Modine was the biggest bomb in box-office history, but it got him to Thailand.

With less interest in films, and his daughter then at university, he was free to pursue his interest in art and live in Thailand.

Coles graduated from sketching to painting after doing art courses at the Otis School in Los Angeles in 2002. He now paints about eight hours a day at a studio off lower Sukhumvit Road.

"A lot of what I'm doing is coming out of the German expressionist style and out of Nolde," he says. "I paint all day, have lunch or dinner on the street or at a food court, and maybe go to the gym. At 10pm I'm finished and wander around for a couple of hours. I might go to Saphan Taksin, Sukhumvit, Ekamai or get the Skytrain somewhere."

What amazes him is the variety of people one can meet - and paint - here. He talks of sitting and deconstructing a scene while having a bowl of noodles on the sidewalk.

When painting, he likes to use strange lighting and will often focus on a person's face.

"I'm interested in what the face hides that's within, and how the same person in the day, during the Bangkok night suddenly they're something else - like someone set them on fire."

MEET THE MAN

Coles will feature new works in a show at the Foreign Correspondents Club, opening on Friday at 7pm.

Philip Cornwel-Smith, the author of "Very Thai", will give a short introductory talk about how Bangkok's nightlife has been an inspiration for many artists, writers, filmmakers and musicians.

For more details, see www.FCCThai.com

http://nationmultimedia.com/life/Creatures-of-the-night-30192373.html


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Wednesday, May 02, 2012

Guy from Iran in the Bangkok Night

Guy from Iran in the Bangkok Night - Chris Coles
The young guy from Iran is wandering around the Bangkok Night for the very first time, looking to do all the things he can't do back in Iran......Silom, Surawong, Boys Town....hundreds of gay bars, rent boys, men from all over the world.....

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Thursday, March 29, 2012

Bangkok Boys Town

"Bangkok Boys Town" - Chris Coles (100 x 80cm acrylic on canvas 2012)
Just off Surawong, near Patpong and Silom, in the soi called Bangkok Boys Town, swarms of gay guys from every country on earth mix and mingle with young Thai men, too old to really be boys but called boys nonetheless, everyone ready to rock and roll.

From a series of 100cm x 80cm acrylic on canvas paintings I am doing of the Bangkok Night for my next show.......

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Monday, July 12, 2010

German Fashion Designer All Lit Up for the Bangkok Night

In Thailand for his fashion business, he's all lit up for his first night out in Bangkok....Silom....Surawong.......Boyz Town.......it all seems very exciting.....and so far from his everyday life and routine in Berlin........

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Saturday, February 02, 2008

Thai Rent Boy Bangkok Boys Town

Thai Rent Boy Bangkok Boys Town - Chris Coles

.....at the same time kind-hearted and mercenary, he works the gay Farangs who wander through Bangkok Boys Town, night after night, week after week, month after month, year after year, hoping to get lucky before he dies from Aids...........there are so many of them, not hundreds or thousands but hundreds of thousands, passing by for some fun on their way to oblivion..............luckily he is Buddhist and knows that if he treats the Farangs well, gives alms to the Monks and sends money to his family, his next life will be better...............

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