Exhibition Portraits from the Bangkok Night

CHRIS COLES ON THE BED SUPPERCLUB “PORTRAITS FROM THE BANGKOK NIGHT”:

One of the great visual things any person with an “eye” notices when they first get to Bangkok is the incredible variety of people and faces wandering around in what I call the Bangkok Night. That is, Bangkok’s streets, bars and clubs after the sun’s gone down and the billions of twinkle lights and tens of thousands of colorful neon signs light up.

Once Bangkok is dark, many of its daytime visual faults – the holes and cracks in the sidewalks, the hot flat bleached sun light, the litter and clutter – disappear and the only thing you really see is whatever is illuminated by the many multi-colored lighting sources, flashing neon and endless twinkle lights. You briefly glimpse the faces of thousands of people from all over Thailand, Asia and the world, from every income strata, from handsome and svelte to huge, fat and ugly, and everything in between.

After a few hours going around in the Bangkok Night, the visual part of the average person’s brain has filled to the brim with an explosion of imagery almost unique to any city on earth.

With that as my inspiration, I’ve painted a series of portraits of some of the many faces I’ve seen in the Bangkok Night, some I’ve just imagined, some very “noir”, some kind of upscale, some in-between.

The “Portraits from the Bangkok Night” in the Bed Supperclub show are all people I’ve either seen at Bed or who, in my imagination at least, if they haven’t actually been to Bed, should have been there or would have been there if they were ever in Bangkok.

There’s a German Fashion Designer, a French Millionaire guy, a Hi-So Thai guy, a Swedish Fashion Model, a Hi-So Thai lady, a Bangkok Club Girl, etc. All of them are “lit up” and excited to be out in the Bangkok Night, soaking up the style, the beautiful people and the svelte ambiance of a high end Bangkok venue like Bed Supperclub.