Bangkok (2023)

Los Angeles, USA

Acrylic paint on wood panel and custom frame, 61x61 cm.

Bangkok isn’t one of those cities you fall in love with at first sight. You have to let it grow on you, literally, because here everything sprouts, swells, and accumulates. This is a city of humidity and mildew. This is my kind of place. Composed mostly of bars, cheap hotels, massage studios and drunk tourists, it never sleeps. There's always loud music playing somewhere. If you're lucky, it’s an old Thai man singing Tracy Chapman covers in broken English; if not: gut-wrenchingly bad techno. Everyone drinks and bar hops from one meaningless conversation to the next, interrupted from time to time by women dressed in traditional Thai clothing selling wooden frogs that ribbit when stroked by a stick, all kinds of beads, necklaces, lasers, hats, lighters, and bracelets reading: I LOVE COCK, PUSSY PLEASE, or simply I LOVE MY BEST FRIEND. The streets are enmeshed with food stalls selling everything from handmade coconut ice-cream, Pad Thai and fruit, to deep fried scorpions and other insects. You're perpetually approached by vendors advertising good massage (very cheap), tuk-tuks (very cheap), weed (very cheap), and the immortal: sir you want bang bang now? I have nice girls for you. VERY CHEAP I’ve never felt more at ease.