Exhibit at Check Inn 99 Lower Sukhumvit Bangkok between Soi 5 & Soi 7 Dec 26 thru Jan 2015 (part of at Bangkok Fiction Night of Noir Event Jan 8, 2015)...

This exhibit featuring some of my original paintings from the NAVIGATING THE BANGKOK NOIR book is part of the Bangkok Fiction Night of Noir event which will take place at Check Inn 99 Thursday January 8th featuring readings from many of Bangkok's leading Expat authors, all part of the burgeoning Bangkok Noir movement......

(Check Inn 99 is located on Lower Sukhumvit between Soi 5 and Soi 7 opposite the Landmark Hotel...the exhibit will be up for about a month from December 26th onwards....open from 6pm to 2am every night.....musical performances by Music of the Heart band starting around 8pm...many thanks to Check Inn 99 Bangkok's energetic and creative impresario Chris Catto-Smith)...........

"Spirit House Japanese Karaoke Sukhumvit" - Chris Coles (15x20 inches watercolor)

Every night before they start work, the hostess girls at the Japanese KTV bring offerings to the Spirit House....small bottles of red soda, shot glasses of Thai whiskey, bananas, a chocolate donut....asking the spirits to bring many Japanese business guys loaded with dough and ready for action.....

(already sold)

"Obsession Bar Nana Plaza" - Chris Coles (24x18 inches watercolor)

Nana Plaza's Number One Ladyboy bar, Obsession's sign says it all.......

(available for sale at 12,000 baht)

"Lazy Afternoon at Lone Star Saloon" - Chris Coles (24x18 inches watercolor)

A lazy afternoon at the Lone Star Saloon on Washington Square...he's been a regular since the end of the Vietnam War and she's been there for fifteen years, both of them well past their expiration dates, happy to share a smoke and a few beers.....

(available for sale at 12,000 baht)

"Party Time Voodoo Bar" - Chris Coles (24x18 watercolor)

Voodoo Bar is a mix of ladyboys and one hundred percent ladies, it is difficult to tell. Some say Thai ladyboys are sometimes so perfectly feminine, only their hands can give them away. With too many beers, multi-colored lights, pounding music and so many bodies moving, the only way to avoid a mistake for sure is to not go there at all. On the other hand, for whatever reason, ignorance or desire, some guys do..........

(available for sale at 12,000 baht)

"Reincarnated German Sex Tourist at Soi Cowboy" - Chris Coles (24x18 inches watercolor)

There are many German tourists who come to Bangkok to chase the bargirls. Every night, night after night, they never have enough. Until their two weeks are up and they catch their flight. In Germany, they dream about their Bangkok girls, hoping to find a way to come back and never leave. Some say when the German guys are re-incarnated they come back as soi dogs and wander around Soi Cowboy to their heart's content...........

(available for sale at 12,000 baht)

"Midnight Patpong" - Chris Coles (18x24 inches watercolor)

By midnight on Friday, Patpong’s full, twenty thousand tourists from Europe, the U.S., Australia, India, the Middle East and Japan, ten thousand girls, hundreds of ladyboys, plenty of beer, whiskey, endless stalls selling counterfeit goods, thirty or forty different disco tracks blasting out of the gogo bars, a world vortex of man woman interaction, a combination sexual theme park, shopping mall and inferno, fiercely consuming an endless stream of humanity and their desire.......

(available for sale at 12,000 baht)

"Happy Couple" - Chris Coles (24x18 inches watercolor)

A happy couple, they each have dreamed of the other, hoping to find what they have been missing in themselves. But what happens if what they see is something they have imagined, not what is actually there.....

(available for sale at 12,000 baht)

"Soi Cowboy" - Chris Coles (100x80cm acrylic on canvas)

The Bangkok Night's most iconic destination a neon wonderland filled with raucous bars, multiple music tracks, people from all over the world and thousands of bargirls who are mainly from the rural northeast region of Thailand called Isan.....

(already sold)

"Sexy Bar" - Chris Coles (80x100cm acrylic on canvas)

The neon sign says Sexy Bar and the blindingly bright colors are screaming for attention....but it's a quiet night, only a few customers, a couple of ladydrinks and very little action.......

(available for sale at 30,000 baht)

"Thaniya Plaza" - Chris Coles (80x100cm acrylic on canvas)

On Patpong's fringe, Thaniya Plaza is for the Japanese executive crowd in Bangkok. They are Thailand's largest group of Expats, owning and running most of the automobile and electronics factoories. Thaniya's set-up to look like Tokyo's Ginza with a vertical array of clubs, KTV's, bars and cozy hang-outs, over a hundred, all with colorful Japanese signs. The Thai hostess girls are dressed in kimonos and gowns and speak a little Japanese. Heloo, How are you, Please come back. They bow from the waist with heads tilted down. If a Western guy approaches, they turn and look the other way, sometimes pointing towards the little sign on the door that says, For Japanese Only.....

(available for sale at 30,000 baht)

"The Bangkok Night" - Chris Coles Talk at Bangkok Fiction Night of Noir Event April 17, 2013 Bangkok

"Ratchada Poseidon" - Chris Coles

Much of the Noir fiction written about the Bangkok Night is set in and around what is often referred to as the Bangkok Night.

But what actually is the Bangkok Night?

The answer usually depends on who you ask.

There's the so-called real or objective version which turns out to be so subjective, it's difficult to find two people who agree on what it is.

Then there's the mythic version which doesn't really describe an objective reality but is more an entertaining yet hazy cloud of accumulated lore from magazine and newspaper articles, tv reports, sensational and otherwise, pop music songs like One Night in Bangkok, stories told by friends and acquaintances, various newspaper reports or blog posts.

For instance, the Trink Column which used to be featured weekly in the Bangkok Post, the Stickman Weekly website, or the Bangkok Eyes blog which presents a detailed, well-organized chronological history of the Bangkok Night.

"Soi Cowboy" - Chris Coles

The mythic version's usually a little out-of-date as the actual Bangkok Night is always in a constant state of change in terms of venues, demographics, geography, fashions, fads and people and as a result, our accumulated perception always lags.

Other versions of the Bangkok Night are presented in the novels of various writers like Christopher G. Moore, John Burdett, Stephen Leather, Jake Needham, Dean Barrett, Tim Hallinan, James Newman, Tom Vater.

"Portrait of Bangkok Noir author Stephan Leather" - Chris Coles

Or in Nick Nostitz' Bangkok's Twilight Zone, a brutal yet brilliant book of photos and commentary set in the Patpong District of the 1990's.

Or Cleo Odzier's autobiographical Patpong Sisters.

There are also versions contained in films like the original very gritty Bangkok Dangerous and even in the completely dumb and often unintentionally absurd Hangover II or in the recent, very evocative and powerful short film True Skin, of Bangkok-in-the-brutal-future, directed by Stephan Zlotescu, a young visual effects guy from LA.

Further versions of the Bangkok Night are in various music videos that play on Thai tv, especially the Isan music videos which often feature storylines of young Isan males and females migrating to Bangkok from the rural countryside to work in various nightlife venues.

"Bangkok Boys Town" - Chris Coles

And then there's the version of the Bangkok Night as contained in my paintings which is the version I'm going to focus on tonight.

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 frm all over Asia and all over the world 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 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, etc.

Like the Paris Night circa 1900 painted by the Fauvists or the Berlin Night early 1900's painted by the Expressionists, 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.

"Obsession Bar Neon" - Chris Coles

There are multiple and constantly overlapping music tracks and sound effects.

All different kinds of women and men, and ladyboys, dressed up and costumed for the night, not for the day.  Thousands of them, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions.

Of every size and shape, beautiful, not beautiful, young, not-so-young.

From everywhere in Thailand, Asia and the world: Isan, Thai, Khmer, Chinese Burmese, Russian, Indian, Japanese, Korean, Arab, Iranian, German, French, Italian, Turks, English, Scottish, Scandinavian, American Australian, African.  One night I even met a guy from Turkmenistan.

"Guy from Turkmenistan in Bangkok Night" - Chris Coles

In my view, as I mentioned already, two key elements in the Bangkok Night are density and velocity.  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 almost irresistible attraction, its ability to draw in millions of people.

Another key 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 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.

"Ratchada Fishbowl" - Chris Coles

The Bangkok Night is full of ambiguities, 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.

"Bangkok Ladyboy Nana Plaza" - Chris Coles

Compulsively, sometimes mindlessly, devouring or being devoured, consuming or being consumed, etc.

It's a world where only the strongest and luckiest manage to avoid being sucked in the vortex and to survive completely intact.