Attasit Pokpong: Intensity amid the Noir
“Lady #1,”
by Attasit Pokpong,
24 inches by
28 inches, oil on linen.
BY NANCY ELSAMANOUDI
The New York art world is both wonderfully
local and wonderfully international. Artists
come here from all over the world to work,
to dialogue with the other artists and to show their
work.
Attasit Pokpong is one such artist. Pokpong is a
rising art star in Thailand who has also shown extensively
in Europe. In Thailand, Pokpong’s iconic
signature portraits of Sino-Asian women are readily
recognized and often imitated.
Pokpong recently came to New York and set up a
studio at the famed 56 Bogart building in Bushwick
for about six months in order to focus on a new body
of work. Some of this new work is now up on view at
his solo show, “The Blooming of a New Sense (Self),”
at SFA projects, on Lower East Side, until April 7.
The painting “My Lady #1,” one of the fi rst works
you see as you enter the gallery, is a prime example of
the type of portraiture that helped solidify Pokpong’s
reputation in Thailand. This stunning piece highlights
Pokpong’s great facility with oil as a medium.
He is a virtuoso who can paint in thin, translucent
layers of glaze with Catherine Murphy-like precision
one minute and throw down thick, lush juicy paint
the next. His incredible feeling for light is subtle and
understated.
In “My Lady #1,” Pokpong dazzles the viewer with
a superb, mostly gray portrait of a beautiful woman
either standing
in the rain or
looking out a window
covered in raindrops. This
painting has a real presence in
the intensity of the woman’s gaze. She
seems to be staring at someone or something. The
intensity of the her gaze, the tension, the psychological
charge of this painting is amped up by its limited,
Film Noir-like color palette.
On another wall at the gallery hangs a magnifi cent,
grand-scale painting, “My Lady.” This painting also
has muted mostly neutral colors and its understated
palette makes its subject of a self unraveling even more
unsettling. The color and the surface of the raw linen
superbly underscores the Francis Bacon-like perversity
of depicting a beautiful pink-lipped head gloriously
imploding behind a sandy
background. It’s as if
the woman in the painting
got herself dolled up
to go to the beach, and
then when she got there,
her head exploded.
Meanwhile, “Collage
Mix Marilyn and My
Lady” is a painting of a
strikingly badass woman
in bright, purple lipstick
wearing Marilyn Monroe’s
signature coif. This
small piece explodes
with loud urban punk
color. The fi erce, pointed
grit of this painting
is really satisfying, and
“My Lady,” by Attasit Pokpong, 67 inches by 59
inches, oil on linen.
“Collage Mix Marilyn and My Lady,” by Attasit
Pokpong, 9 inches by 8.5 inches, oil on linen.
this gem calls to mind other contemporary artists that
Pokpong seems to be in conversation with, such as
Wangechi Mutu.
When I fi rst saw this painting, there was a moment
in which it shifted for me and I couldn’t tell if I was
looking at a woman or man wearing a woman’s wig.
Here, Pokpong seems to be saying, “Well yes, my
21st-century Marilyn has an Asian nose, a crazy Hollywood
do, and impossibly sexy lips.”
“The Blooming of the New Sense (Self),” at SFA
Projects, 131 Chrystie St., until April 7.
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