How to be an Angel

I visited a few galleries last Saturday with Miss Bubbles, so here I am sharing some photos (no, I'm not yet a photo blog... puhlease).

Our first stop is Kathmandu Photo Gallery, a few steps from where Bubbles lives. Kathmandu is a charming shop-house that had been converted into a gallery, and is close to the Hindu temple in Silom.

Luke Cassidy-Dorion is currently showing his photographs of Ramkhamhaeng University in an exhibit called Ram.

A few blocks away from Kathmandu is Silom Galleria, perhaps one of Bangkok's premiere locations of art galleries. (But what do I know, I haven't exactly explored the other galleries in the other parts of town.)

What I like about Silom Galleria is you can see a good number of galleries in one stop because it has about a dozen contemporary art galleries interspersed with jewelry stores.  I haven't visited the place in ages though so I thought it's time I drop by it again.

On our visit last Saturday, however, I noticed that some galleries have shut their operations while others are simply closed temporarily.

Among the open galleries, I was very struck by the exhibit at Artery. There was a sprawling painting that was somewhat a parody of The Last Supper as well as some other works that seem to play with classic masterpieces such as the Mona Lisa. Unfortunately, I didn't have the chance to ID the artist as the exhibit has yet to open (in about two weeks' time, I guess).

I was very impressed as well with these black and white oil paintings from another artist.

We then moved to another gallery. I forgot its name though but they had good collection of eclectic pieces.

As always, one of the highlights of any trip to Silom Galleria is a stop at the Thavibu Gallery, which specializes in contemporary art from Thailand, Vietnam, and Burma. There's a nice lady there who's always cheerfully giving some background information about their exhibits even if it's quite obvious that I could never afford any of those pieces that run up to half a million baht.

The current exhibit called How to be an Angel is by Vietnamese artist Truong Tan. Using the traditional Vietnamese lacquer painting, which I heard is a painstaking and time-consuming process (but the output is always divine!), most of his pieces, I noticed, are homo-erotic.