Thaweesak Srithongdee’s career is on a trajectory to stardom. Highly marketable, his art consists of slickly figurative, surrealistic scenes that manifest from the artist’s lucid imagination. His style, with its colourful, instantly recognisable backdrops and distinctly popish caricatures, has almost made him an overnight sensation.

      Thaweesak developed a fascination with art from an early age. In a career that spans just seven years, the artist can already boast eight solo hangings, including A Taste of Thailand at London’s Asia Contemporary Art and Drive My Car at Singapore’s Atelier Frank & Lee in 2001, along with the comprehensive 2002 Trance in Bangkok. 

       For his earliest works, he would gather source materials, sketch and take photos as foundations for a full-blown painting. But now he just lets his imagination run amok upon his raw materials of choice, favouring spontaneity over artificial contrivances. “In the past, my art was derived from my immediate surroundings and those that fascinated me, along with portraits of my artist pals and girls I had the hots for. Then I became more aware of society, its parameters, and even environmental concerns permeated my work for a while. Eventually I turned back in on myself, trying to make sense of my subconscious and emotions.”  

       Thaweesak’s career really went stratospheric after the striking three-man exhibit Lured, Love, Power in 2000. Teaming up with two of his Silpakorn art school chums (where he attained an MFA), Wutikorn Khongkha and Anan Pratchayanan, the show’s loose theme was a search for that elusive state of human equilibrium – balancing inner desires against external forces – through creativity. While Wutikorn and Anan’s potential is slowly being recognised, for Thaweesak, the year 2000 saw him contributing to group shows in Germany and The Netherlands (where he also had his first overseas solo hanging in Amsterdam).

      In the same year as the Lured, Love, Power show, all three participating artists banded together with another 21 young Thai artists to form the ambitious group Scopolamine. Promoting young unrecognised talent as a collective force, Thaweesak was one of the principal protagonists of the eclectic troupe; but an overly excessive exhibition rollout in the following two years undermined the group’s potential through visual complacency. Consequently, the group now lies dormant.

       It was around the start of the millennium that Thaweesak, who hails from the southern beach resort of Hua Hin, began integrating appropriated surfaces as backgrounds to paint over. Perspex plastic, circular trays, and a range of wood and metal kitchen utensils all featured in the mix, but it was the florid, printed textiles that really added new zest to his paintings. When visiting a market with his mother, Thaweesak fell in love with the lurid chintz fabrics usually used for sarongs. The traditional materials were ideal for supplanting the garish, trippy backgrounds Thaweesak ordinarily creates through collages of kaleidoscopic paint. One of the best examples of these customised backcloths is in the huge acrylic painting The Power of Love (2002), wherein the psychedelic stage-set contributes an indigenous kitschiness to the fist-clenching, abdomen-bulging man-girl.

        Thaweesak is a voyeur of the youth trends being so eagerly embraced by Bangkok teens and young adults. Usually imported from the West or Japan, the fashion and body-altering uniforms are modelled by the middle-classes as they parade through the city’s malls and clubs with their dyed hair, body piercing, tattoos, fingernail art, and more recently, pubic hair-dressing. The artist’s portraits satirise these fads and become a tongue-in-cheek barometer of hip – just look at how many figures have tattoos in his 2003 exhibition Neo-Morph.    

His art is often sexually ambiguous, an indication of the tolerance Thais have for different sexual orientations. While Bangkok has a proliferation of go-go bars and massage parlours, it’s also known for its population of katoey or lady-boys. These stunning, androgynous creatures camp it up at tourist-mobbed cabaret shows. In a country where a growing number of tourists come for cheap and accessible sex changes, it’s of little surprise that Thaweesak’s figures are gender-bending mutants for a new millennium. Whether his superheroes are sexually alluring, liberating or even perverse, is left up to the viewer’s prejudices and predilections.     

       Steroid-pumped pectorals, collagen-swollen lips, and silicon-solid mammaries tease the viewer. But he is also enamoured by classical depictions of the human form, and this Adonis Greco-Roman perfection is crudely and satirically recreated in works like Mui (2003). The self-absorbed notion of image and ideals of physical perfection espoused by Hollywood come into play here. 

      Even today, Thaweesak is like a hormonal adolescent when it comes to sex and the human body, obsessing over muscles, torsos, and especially the female form. In the picture Telepathy (2002), his partner Kwang hovers with a space helmet on her head, against a floral chintz backdrop - her golden brown Asian complexion accentuated by green Caucasian eyes. Thaweesak blends idealised elements from all races into these fantasy forms. “I feel like Frankenstein trying to create my own vision of human beauty,” says the artist. 

      Which doesn’t mean his art strives to be erotic or sensual – far from it, according to him. In fact, he is rather conservative about sex and is not opposed to Thailand’s prudish, out-dated censorship laws. “Before I tried painting in genitalia and nipples on my figures, but when I looked at them afterwards I felt ashamed and immediately painted them out.”  In a society of confounding extremes when it comes to addressing sex, Thaweesak is conscious of both the power and the limitations of his art, yet still hopes his flesh-toned pictures will contribute to greater liberalisation.   

      Toning down his flamboyant palette for his most recent exhibit Neo-Morph in 2003, Thaweesak opted for more understated hues with intimate, if disturbing, acrylic portraits over a monotone silver background. A partial knock-on from his popular cartoon strips, his use of line is becoming more instrumental than colour. In his cast of outlandish, mutant-morphed beings, hands mould into bloody scissors, rubbery tubes replace tongues or nipples, and in Gotomosun (2003) a fetishistic, mask-clad male dips his hand into a fleshy crotch pouch. The visages appear hollow, devoid of feeling, with piercing eyes usually staring out at the viewer.

      Besides painting, Thaweesak also regularly contributes articles and cartoon strips to Thai magazines. It’s through these more popular accessible outlets that the artist voices his concerns about war in the Middle East, local politics, or current affairs. The cartoons are often about the choices an individual makes and how they affect their lives. Some of these influences have seeped into his artworks. In several paintings his naked figures tote guns, while in the 2003 canvas Revolution a shadowy portrait of Che Guevara appears. Still, these are more like fleeting post-modern references and Hollywood-style sensationalism than seditious propaganda.

     At the moment, Thaweesak is one of the hottest artists in Thailand, and obviously has an abundance of talent. Part of his popularity stems from the fact that his work is accessible to an art public somewhat baffled by all the perplexing, conceptual art presently dominating the market.

     “I don’t need to spell my work out to viewers. They can conclude whatever they want because there is no right or wrong way to read my art… it is explorative and even I cannot clarify all the images that manifest themselves.” Like flicking through a pop culture magazine, Thaweesak’s art seduces the viewer with humour, sex, and outright freakishness!    

     It will be interesting to see whether he can rise to the challenge and continue to keep his art fresh and relevant, or whether he will continue to rely on its undeniable visual allure and novelty value. The fact that his work is difficult to pigeonhole is perhaps a testament to the fact that painting as a medium is far from redundant. Though how long audiences will be captivated by Thaweesak’s private fantasy world is anyone’s guess.    

Miss Banana, 2000 · Acrylic on canvas · 60 x 120 cm · Courtesy of Thavibu Gallery

The Power of Love, 2002 · Acrylic on Cloth · 200 x 200 cm · Courtesy of H Gallery