Art that glows in the dark

PARIS, THE CITY of Light, might be a little dimmer this year following the November 13 terrorist attacks, but Bangkok, the City of Angels, is ablaze for its third edition of Galleries Night, with art places around the metropolis staying open late.

In January, Galleries Night moves to Chiang Mai, where 30-odd art spaces have signed up for the fun.

The Bangkok celebration started last night with the exterior of the French Embassy, fittingly enough, given the hi-tech illumination treatment by Bangkok-based lighting designer Matteo Messervy. The amazing visual spectacle had as its context the United Nations Climate Conference known as COP21 that’s taking place in Paris next week.

Messervy projected animated shots of scenery and wildlife on the embassy’s huge, white Corian-clad facade. Corian is a trademarked material that lends itself perfectly to colourful and creative designs, and Messervy made the most of it with video sequences capturing the beauty and rhythm of a natural world now imperilled. COP 21 thus gave the opening Galleries Night an immediate environmental theme. 

Security was tight as 200 invited guests and media teams witnessed the launch, but the embassy light show continues, visible from the street, through December 11, when the climate summit ends.

Galleries Night, originally organised by the embassy as part of its annual La Fete cultural programme, has for the past two years mimicked the dusk-to-dawn Nuit Blanche art extravaganza held each October in the French capital. Bangkok has 38 galleries participating this year, more than twice as many as in 2013, and many of them have cocktail-intensive socialising planned.

“The Bangkok contemporary-art scene is exciting,” says French cultural attache Benoit Etienne , and Galleries Night is a fun way to lure people out who don’t normally get to see much art in person.

“This year we have two suggested routes for gallery-hopping,” adds coordinator Mary Pansanga, “and we’ve got a mobile-phone application called ‘ArtTracks’, with maps and schedules, to serve as guides so that participants can enjoy the experience even more.”

Art-lovers journeyed to a big party at the Alliance Francaise, which hosted a fashion show and an exhibition of 400 striking images by Thai and French photographers. Bangkok-based French curator Myrtille Tibayren of the Toot Yung Nomad Gallery organised the show.

The Ferry Gallery, an actual (privately owned) ferryboat, crisscrossed the Chao Phraya River bearing passengers between various piers as well as its latest show, the dual exhibition, “Love” and “Other” by Tracey Moffat. 

Meanwhile the Bangkok CityCity Gallery on South Sathorn Road was bustling until midnight with a one-night-only light show by photographer Kornkrit Jianpinidnan. Until Monday he’ll be presenting his exhibition “Project Sensibility” in the same place, and he’s got yet another show, “The Passenger”, at Cloud Space in Chinatown (Yaowarat), an installation laden with the poetic musings of a wanderer, ongoing through December 15.

Tonight’s events shift the focus to 19 galleries along the BTS Sukhumvit line and around the Silom Line’s National Stadium station.

The Bangkok Art and Culture Centre is hosting a reception with snacks and wine from 7 to 9 on the seventh floor, during which you really ought to join in one of the guided tours, conducted in English, of the two current shows, “P Rox Imity – Part II” by Polish artists working in the new media, and the Ithipol Thangchalok retrospective “Abstract: The Truth of Art”, featuring nearly 100 works by the National Artist.

A few minutes’ walk takes you to the Jim Thompson Art Centre on Soi Kasemsan 2, where hot contemporary artist Arin Rungjang will offer a rundown on his solo show “The Making of Golden Teardrop” from 8.30 to 9.

“Golden Teardrop” is the highly acclaimed sculptural installation that swivelled heads in the Thai Pavilion mounted for the 2013 Venice Biennale and has travelled to several countries. The Thompson has given Arin the chance to present the work in its entirety, as he intended it to be seen. This show runs through March.

Next you’re off to Phra Khanong station and a short hike to the Rebel Art Space on Sukhumvit Soi 67 for the opening of the show “Life-Light” from 8 until late. Its social-activist creators, including gallery co-owner Vasan Sitthiket, have also arranged live performances at 8 and 10.30 by Alongkot Jaisong and Satit Raksassri.

Then you can hop back on the Skytrain to Thong Lor and stroll to the WTF Gallery on Sukhumvit Soi 53, where Jedsada Tangtrakulwong will lead tours of his exhibition “Traverse” from 10 to 10.30, following by an informal closing of the Galleries Night proceedings for the day.

Jedsada should prove to be a handy guide, because his site-specific installation is inspired by his experience walking through a 2.5-kilometre traffic tunnel where there was no traffic, in fact nothing at all. He was at first fearful in the darkness and silence of a huge tube that seemed to stretch into infinity, but soon found himself slowing his pace and yielding to a strange calm, a certainty that there would be light at the other end. Logic had nothing to do with it, he admits, but he was genuinely surprised by the depth of his emotions. 

Jedsada has tried to recreate the sensation by building two covered passageways using different materials, some of them recycled from his earlier art pieces in a nod to reducing waste. The complex cocoons use every centimetre of the small exhibition space “to prolong the viewer’s engagement with the work and promote mindfulness and positive thinking”.

The bar-cum-gallery WTF knows it will have many weary art-travellers on its hands, so ample refreshments are in stock to spark conservation about the local contemporary-art scene.

 

AN APP FOR THAT

- Take part in Galleries Night with the “ArtTracks” app, available from the Apple Store and Google Play.

- Find out more at www.Facebook.com/galleriesnight.