Bangkok, 27 August 2023.
I normally try to keep all the images here my own original work and/or the work of my roomful of robot “assistants,” all of them named Ági for some reason. But today I will depart from this august tradition (heh, get it?) and swipe a few images from Instagram. Dear Internet (Dear Artists) please forgive me, it’s for a good cause.
Amnaj Wachirasut
Twilight / ใกล้พลบ. Oil on canvas, 125x155cm, 2023. © Amnaj Wachirasut
Fúú, Mensch, it’s been a while since I saw a painting I really really wanted to buy. But here it is. (Yeah, I’m way too broke to buy it at the moment, but mark my words: you should buy it in my place! I will buy another one.)
I’m not going to put them all here but go look at his Insta (also linked from the pic) and you will see a plethora of quite sexy nudes – who knew that was still a thing?
And this in particular, wow. (Can a painting with a staircase not be about Duchamp? No idea.)
I love it when I find a painter who paints pictures I wish I’d painted myself, but in a style so different from my own that I won’t ever paint them by accident. In this sense, and also in some of the very painterliness of the work, it reminds me a bit of Fuchs.
George Raftopoulos
SLOW (L) EARN SLOW BURN. Oil on Canvas, 198x198cm, 2023. © George Raftopoulos
Here’s another artist I hope to collect one day! (I guess that’s the theme for this post, sure, why not.) I fear my walls will never be big enough for these giant monumental things, but no worries, he’s a painter of many sizes, which is one of the things I like about him.
Raftopoulos is doing the abstract-figurative thing full-tilt, and it’s awesome. There are a lot of historical references in his work, and a lot of what I can only assume are personal references too. It’s very mysterious.
I was actually thinking about Raftopoulos while listening to a podcast interview with Georgia Hart and contemplating my own, as-yet financially doomish art career. And the thought that stuck was: look at George Raftopoulos! A guy my age! Sure, he’s had a lot more shows and yadda yadda, but from my point of view he’s just some dude I saw on Insta and I really liked his paintings, and now here I am quietly promoting him, and at some point I will probably buy one of his works. Anything is possible!
So there you have it. Raftopoulos rocks, now go buy something before Nicodim gets his hands on this guy!
Christian Gonzenbach
Domestication du feu (Peugeot, BB 50cc 1957). Glazed ceramic, 24x24x20cm, 2022. © Christian Gonzenbach
What I love about Gonzenbach is his balancing act between high-concept and thrashing, Mitteleuropa Angst-ism, sort of like a young Kiefer but not as nihilistic. You think I jest? Listen to the man himself:
“My entire work is based around the floating notion of everyday and its extraordinary banality.” – Christian Gonzenbach, 2005
That is from an exhibition of really beautiful vases.
Another thing that stands out with him is how playful some of the work is – boyishly playful, Lego time, that sort of thing – and then how much implied violence there is in other things.
I haven’t really collected sculpture yet. I have a few objects, and some of my own; and I have plans to collect but they’re pretty vague. The one point in which they are not vague is that if I can afford it, one day I’m buying a Gonzenbach and putting it in my art house in Tenerife.
Wachirasut and Raftoupolos are best viewed on Instagram at the moment, but Gonzenbach has a proper web site and you should check it out, there is a lot of work and it’s easy to browse: GONZENBACH.NET
And there we have it, a sort of mini-several-artists to tide us over until the writer’s block unblocks. I should do this more often. And we both, you and I, Dear Viewer, should get off our corpulent backsides and go buy some art!
Now get to work Mr Frost, the pictures won’t paint themselves, not yet anyway.
