Bangkok is by turns beautiful and decrepit, glorious and unseemly, and it always moves at lightning speed.
No one captures this multi-dimensional, frenetic energy better than Abi — known online as Abi Original — one of Bangkok’s most persevering, talented, and prolific muralists and graffiti artists.
His second solo show opens Saturday at Silom’s Scene Gallery, above Whiteline. The exhibition is titled “Bangkok Dizzy,” as a play on Bangkok Disney, and tells its tale using repurposed versions of famous cartoon characters. The scenes of life in the big city — the good, the criminal, the weird — go hard with social messages about things we should be changing but instead choose not to see.
Abi told Coconuts, “Some scenarios we see everyday. We’re so used to it that we dismiss it as not our business. I turned this into my artistic statement. I used classic characters to tell these stories in a funny, fresh way.”
Included is a piece starring The Jungle Book’s Mowgli transplanted into the city and strolling along with the most normal of Bangkok accoutrements: A 7-Eleven sack and a plastic bag full of cola, making a statement about single-use plastic waste in the city.
In an ode to the regular poisoning of soi dogs in Bangkok, another scene shows Goofy and Scooby Doo awaiting a tainted treat from a witch, while Snoopy lies dead behind her after eating one.
The artist makes a statement about the pace and danger of life in the city juxtaposed against citizens’ cavalier attitude in a piece that shows Disney’s Princess Jasmine taking a selfie while perched precariously on the back of a moto-taxi.
Though this show tells specific stories using well-known characters, Abi has a wide breadth of work. He does large-scale characters and murals on his own and in collaboration with others, including a new one referencing life by Bangkok’s river for the recent Pipit Banglamphoo Street Art project with buddies Jecks Bkk and Dark One Jartown Rga.
He also stencils emoji to make statements in certain places around the city and is not immune to the occasional political piece, like the one he was responsible for earlier this year after news hit about construction CEO Premchai Karnasuta killing a protected panther.
Abi often works in tandem with the city’s biggest street artists and considers them family. Saturday’s show is “sponsored” by friends Alex Face and Mue Bon, arguably the two biggest names in Bangkok street art. They’ll be on hand for the opening and donated paint and supplies for their friend’s show.
He credits Face as the person who got him started in street art though he’d been interested long before, even saving up in his childhood to buy a pricey book called Graffiti World. “That was before internet or cell phones. I studied that book intensely and tried to recreate everything in it.”
But it wasn’t until after college that he met Face. “When I graduated from college 12 years ago, I met Alex. He was so confident in who he is and what he was doing, he became a role model. He lit a fire inside of me to go out and paint walls and I’ve been doing it ever since.”
His first piece went up in 2006 on an abandoned building near the Ratchada-Lad Prao intersection. Since the building has high fences around it, the piece has managed to survive for a dozen years and is still visible. It’s an ancient artifact as far as street art is concerned and provides Abi solace in times of need. “Every time I’m down, I go back here and look at that piece. It gives me the strength to persevere through anything.”
If you go on Saturday, expect a party vibe, with most of Bangkok’s street art names in attendance and live performances by reggae band Goh-M and Dr. Dapookster of The Sticky Rice.
FIND IT:
Bangkok Dizzy – Solo Exhibition by Abi
Scene Gallery
Silom Soi 8 (above Whiteline)
7pm-1am
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