Greetings from a cafe named Dexter, probably not after the serial killer.

Yesterday we went to the Bangkok Art & Culture Center (BACC), which will apparently like your posts on Instagram if you tag them there. It seemed to be, essentially, a modern art museum without any permanent exhibits from the new masters. It had some pretty cool stuff! And it was for the most part cultural art, which I guess makes sense when you consider the name.

Much of the Center’s offerings were dedicated to the late King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who was very, very popular around these parts. Very very. I don’t know as much about him as I should, but might very well pick up a book on him. Trying to understand Thailand very well, without understanding Bhumibol, seems pretty impossible.

Anyway, he died in October, and they’re still officially in mourning. The very front of the museum, right at the big National Stadium rail stop, featured the exhibit 5 Graffiti Artists in Remembrance of H.M. King Bhumibol.

Pretty cool stuff. I recognized a couple of the artists from their works around town.

The lower floors were merchandise, hands-on workshops that were closed at the time, and more up-and-coming artists. One that struck me was a series of large oil paintings called Fragments Of Beauty.

As a woman, I have an interest on reforming myself more beautifully by using a lot of cosmetic accessories such as earring, cosmetic, contact-lens, cotton-buds, etc. and when I look at all the trace that remain on the accessories has remind me the cost of beauty that all woman must paid for, which inspired me on creating this set of large scale oil-paintings.

The next floor had an exhibition of wearable/touchable/experiential pieces about ethnic and sectarian conflict in Thailand and Myanmar that didn’t really photograph well. In addition, I didn’t have enough cultural knowledge to recognize all the regional dress and the flags that were used as symbolism. Unfortunately this one went over my head.

Then we entered the ‘main’ part of the museum, which forbade bags and whatnot, and rented out loc
kers for a deposit. In went our bags and my silly hat.

The escalators were replaced with a Guggenheim-style spiral. The first exhibition was portraits of the King, I believe the ones shown were winners of a contest with a hall for honorable mentions. There were way too many to show all the pictures I took. I put them in an Imgur gallery here. But this, at the very front, was a highlight.

The next floor featured a series of works that spoke to various aspects of Southeast Asia, as the artists wanted to portray it. Some was hipster nonsense. Some was of the “weird film in a dark room” variety. One was based on shadowing a teen member of what was, for lack of a better term, a motorcycle youth gang. He’s now in motorcycle mechanic school and reflected back on his recent years. One of the things the artist observed was that they all dreamed of having parts tempered such as to show a rainbow pattern. But this is a very expensive process, so they could only do it on smaller parts. The artist had provided a number of objects with this kind of metal, as part of their exhibit.

Well, it’s time to leave the cafe now, so I leave you with these: FISH!