“ONE NIGHT IN BANGKOK” by American painter Chris Coles

You are cordially invited to the opening of “ONE NIGHT IN BANGKOK”

the noir expressionist world of the Bangkok night

by American painter Chris Coles -

 

The opening reception is on WEDNESDAY 5th August 2009 at 7 pm @

69A Pagoda Street (2nd Level – above Bee Cheng Hiang)

Singapore 059228

Tel: 6222 7809

Website: www@forth.sg  

MRT: Chinatown Station Exit A

For detailed map, please visit www.forth,sg/contact.htm

Mon-Sat 12noon – 7pm   Sun 12noon – 5pm (Closed on Public Holiday)

 

The exhibition runs till Sunday 16th August 2009.

 

Additional sales enquiries may be made through UTTERLY ART

Tel: 6226 2605 HP: 9487 2006 (Keng Hock)

Email: utterlyart@pacific.net.sg

 

Forth Gallery can be contacted at 62227809 (Debbie)
or debbie@forth.sg.

Attendance at the exhibitions are FREE.

One Night in Bangkok is an event of IndigNation 2009.

 
About the Exhibition:

One night in Bangkok and the world’s your oyster

The bars are temples but the pearls ain’t free

You’ll find a god in every golden cloister

And if you’re lucky then the god’s a she

I can feel an angel sliding up to me

 

-          from the musical Chess, lyrics Tim Rice

 

The blinding neon and shady denizens of the Bangkok night are captured vividly in American painter Chris Cole’s watercolour renditions of the lurid and colourful world of the Thai capital’s notorious nightlife. Heavily distorted lines and strong, clashing colors dominate in these paintings which portray a chaotic, edgy noir world of colliding intention and misplaced desire, lives out of balance, male-female compulsion, alienation and disassociation. They echo the German Expressionist paintings from Berlin in the early 1900’s as well as the Paris nightlife paintings of Toulouse-Lautrec, Degas and the early Picasso. Organized into twinkling street scenes, situational encounters and mesmerizing portraits of the girls, the boys, the kathoeys (ladyboys) and their clients, Chris Cole shows us how the Bangkok night isn’t “only a sordid money-machine servicing the low-end of humanity”, but “an authentic and unique setting in the ongoing cultural history of mankind”.

 

 
About the Artists:

The visual arts representative of the emerging Bangkok noir movement (including the crime fiction of Christopher Moore, Jake Needham, Stephen Leader and John Burdett; and the films of the Pang brothers and Smith Timsawit), Chris Coles is an artist and filmmaker who lives in Los Angeles and Bangkok.  One of the first artists to explore the world of the Bangkok Night, his paintings, in the Expressionist style, are jagged emotional portraits, revealing a raw and primitive layer of the human experience.

 

Chris grew up on the coast of Maine and after graduating from Brown University, received a Watson Fellowship to spend a year living in the Bajuni Islands off the coast of East Africa where he made a series of voyages up and down the coast in Swahili trading dhows.  He has lived and worked in Europe, North America, Asia, the South Pacific, Australia and Greenland. Chris is also a graduate of the British National Film and Television School and has taken art courses at the Otis School in Los Angeles.  Among the films he has worked on are CHAPLIN, L.A. STORY, RAINBOW WAR and BALLET ROBOTIQUE (both nominated for Academy Awards as best dramatic short), CUTTHROAT ISLAND, ROAD TO WELLVILLE,  ROSARY MURDERS, the SUPERMAN films, OUT COLD, the TV series SIRENS and many more.

Singapore Guidance Angel BY RICHARD LIM HAN 新加坡守护神- 林汉

                   

You are cordially invited to the opening of 

Singapore Guidance Angel 新加坡守护神 BY RICHARD LIM HAN 林汉

Opening Reception on 24th July 09, Friday from 7pm to 9pm @ FORTH GALLERY
(above Bee Cheng Hiang on Pagoda St, just outside
Chinatown NE Line MRT Station Exit A)
69A Pagoda Street (2nd Level)
Singapore 059228
Tel: 6222 7809
Email: sales@forth.sg or justin@forth.sg
For detailed map, please visit www.forth,sg/contact.htm
Mon-Sat 12noon – 7pm Sun 12noon – 5pm

The exhibition run from 22 July to 02 August 2009

Attendance at the exhibitions are FREE.

 About the Exhibition:

Singapore Guidance Angel 

3 years of my creative artworks, i have chosen “Human Figure” as my main source of inspiration. These figure are recent historical representative who are courageous and legendary. Their brilliant contribution to the world is respectable for all such as Gandhi from India, Mother Teresa, South Africa Nelson Mandela and China’s Chairman Mao Zhi Dong. Singapore Senior Minister – Mr Lee Kuan Yew also became my recent year human figure artworks aspiration.

After reading the Biogragphy of MM Lee Kuan Yew, i felt the sense of respect and admiration toward him. Not because he was our Prime Minister or  Minister Mentor but because of his patience & diligent of nurturing Singapore like his own child into an independent country known to the world. At 42 years old, MM Lee became the 1st Prime Minister in Singapore and have taken up the challenge with his intelligent, wit and sharp political judgement & strategy to make Singapore a Miracle. He had created the present strong, prosperous and independent country. On MM Lee, we can see the quality that make a outstanding leader.

He might have created a storm during his leadership years as Singapore Prime Minister but now even as he aged, he is still be guiding Singapore through the present economic crisis and will not even take his rest. To me, MM Lee is Singapore Guidance Angel and will continue to look over Singapore with his presence.

 

About the Artists:

An Artist specializing in modern and chinese paintings. His Father, Mr Lim Kok Yong, a well known artist from China, spurred his interests in calligraphy at a very young age.

Richard started his career as a fabric print designer. In 1998, he left his business to focus on being a freelance artist. Between 1998 to 2003, he visited Shaoxin, Hanzhou and Shanghai to rediscover his chinese roots and to improve his calligraphy and chinese stone seal craving skills. Richard works from his two private art studios in Shaoxin and Singapore.

关于画展: 

三年来的创作里, 人像画是一块主要的组成拼图. 在我所选择探索创作的主人翁,大部分都是近代历史中伟大, 富有传奇性的人物. 他们的一生都是浪漫, 辉煌,所作所为, 都足以让人们肃然起敬, 普世楷模. 如印度圣雄甘地, 修女泰利莎, 南非的黑人领袖德拉,新中国的建国者毛泽东等等.新加坡资政李光耀先生是我近年来主要的创作对像.

我曾经拜读了李光耀资政的回忆录之后,我对李光耀资政有一种莫名的崇拜和敬仰.那不是因为他是一位总理或资政,我觉得他有一棵赤子之心.义无反顾的精神, 他为国为民费尽心思.在从政过程中也曾经冒险犯难与政敌和极端分子斗智斗勇.42岁成为新加坡第一任总理,挑起国家生死存亡的重担.以他的聪明与才智,敏锐的资治判断力和战略眼光创造了新加坡奇迹.一手塑造了一个富强独特的小国.在他的身上我们看到了伟人所俱有的各种优良品质他都拥有.

当年叱咤风云的李光耀资政现在也垂垂老矣,,岁月不留情, 英雄豪杰, 凡夫俗子都一样不能躲避生命的规律,但是不不管怎样, 这位快乐的老人所创造的国家可以永存,富强不息. 因为他是我们 新加坡的守护神,永远的守护神.守护这块幸福的土地.

 关于画家:

林汉专于现代与中国画.他的父亲是中国著名画家也是鼓励和培养林汉从小写书法的兴趣.  汉开始是一位织布图案设计师.在1998年,他离开了他的生意专注于做一名自由画家.在1998到2003年之间,他去了绍兴,杭州和上海去寻根同时也学习与进修他的书法和篆刻.  现在他在新加玻与中国的绍兴都有自己的画室来作他的美术创作.

PLease sign up in our mailing list from www.forth.sg or email to sales@forth.sg

PROSPEKTS 2009: Group show by Amihan, Angelo Tabije and Zean Cabangis

You are cordially invited to the opening of
PROSPEKTS 2009
Group show by Amihan, Angelo Tabije and Zean Cabangis

WEDNESDAY 8th JULY 2009 at 7 pm
69A Pagoda Street (2nd Level – above Bee Cheng Hiang)
Singapore 059228
Tel: 6222 7809
Website: www@forth.sg
MRT: Chinatown Station Exit A
For detailed map, please visit www.forth,sg/contact.htm
Mon-Sat 12noon – 7pm Sun 12noon – 5pm (Closed on Public Holiday)

The exhibition runs till SUNDAY 19th JULY 2009.

Additional sales enquiries may be made through UTTERLY ART
Tel: 6226 2605 HP: 9487 2006 (Keng Hock)
Email: utterlyart@pacific.net.sg

Forth Gallery can be contacted at 62227809 (Debbie) or debbie@forth.sg.

Attendance at the exhibitions are FREE.
——————————————————————-
About the Exhibition:
PROSPEKTS begins a new series of exhibitions co-organized with Kaida Gallery which introduces young contemporary Filipino artists into Singapore. PROSPEKTS 2009 brings together works from three painters, Amihan, Angelo Tabije, and Zean Cabangis, threaded together by their individual contemplations on the changing times.

A painter and a theater artist hailing from the Jumalon family of painters, Amihan’s works straddle the surreal and the foreboding: images of women, war, and medieval implements of violence, all shrouded in a scratchy mist. Disconcertingly ambiguous, Amihan’s images span issues of gender and identity, memory and reality, drawing out a sense of unease and a foreboding of violence.

Angelo Tabije’s paintings juxtapose images of hi-tech machinery and manufactured technologies over colonial images of pre-Hispanic and indigenous Filipinos. Gears, levers, and minute parts of the machine become elaborate headdresses, like grotesque artifacts from a lost civilization. A reflection on the role of technology and identity, Tabije’s paintings are concerned with our over-reliance on technology, to the point that society no longer recognizes how machines affect people and their environment.

Providing a counterpoint to Tabije’s warnings, Zean Cabangis’ work attempts to show that modern technology need not necessarily be a hindrance to art making or painting itself. Instead, it is an additional tool in creating more dynamic and inspiring works. Images are unified by a merging of computer-manipulated images and painterly techniques, such as dripping, washes, and splatters. The paintings manifest a seamless tension created by the duality between control and spontaneity, the digital and the painterly.

About the Artists:
Hailing from the Jumalon family of painters in Zamboanga City in Southern Philippines, Amihan has been in the local art scene for 20 years. She held a solo exhibition at the Cultural Center of the Philippines in Manila in 2002 and has exhibited in various art spaces throughout the archipelago, including Zamboanga, Davao, Cagayan, Dipolog, Baguio, Bacolod, and Dumaguete.

Angelo Tabije graduated from the University of the Philippines, College of Fine Arts(BFA) and was awarded with distinctions at various national art competitions, most notably the Grand Prize (Oil/Acrylic Category) at the 6th Art Petron National
Competition in 2006. Tabije was also a Finalist in the 38th Shell National Art Competition (Oil/Acrylic category) in 2005, the 2007-2008 PLDT-DPC Telephone Directory Cover 21st Visual Art Competition, and the 7th Art Ptron National Student Art Competition (Oil/Acrylic category).

Zean Cabangis finished his Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA), majoring in Painting, at the UP College of Fine Arts, distinguishing himself upon graduation with the Most
Outstanding Thesis award and a Gawad Chancellor Award for Academic Acheivement in 2006. He has been part of numerous group shows, including the Shell National Students Art Competition as a Finalist in 2004, as well as exhibitions at Kaida Art Gallery, the Cultural Center of the Philippines, Art Informal, and Pinto Gallery.