Specializing in Thai & Asian Contemporary Art

Home

DISQUIET

H Gallery is very pleased to announce Will Klose’s third solo exhibition with the gallery, a new series of the British artist’s most conceptually sophisticated paintings to date. Klose settled with his family in Bangkok in recent years and his previous works explored the strange anonymity of the city's infrastructure and benign sense of alienation and quiet dramas of domestic life in a foreign place. This new series is a stylistic departure while continuing to study his relationship to evolving personal history.Disquiet are a set of deceptively realist narratives unfolding on suburban London streets, of the type where Klose grew up, and evoke metaphors of the familiar made strange as a means for Klose to continue to trace his continuing sense of dislocation. A tacit context is what it would mean to directly comment on Thailand in the current political climate and hence Klose values ambiguity.

The scenarios in Disquiet are compellingly enigmatic. Men in protective uniforms closely examine the details of a footpath; an incongruous group gathers in a cordoned area, curiously conferring in view of bland semi-detached homes; a figure falls dramatically; intimate exchanges between couples can be discerned; and subtle and extreme disturbances occur, birds swoop and black smoke billows into a clear afternoon sky.

Disquiet gently describes the facades of suburbia as signs of mystery and private dramas. Here the typical notion of suburbia as a site of contentment becomes its opposite. In this respect Klose's works have a corollary in Eric Fischl's painterly explorations of the anxieties beneath the surfaces of affluence in middle class America. And both share a cinematic – epic and allegorical – view of their subject. But, unlike Fischl, Klose eschews a visceral or dramatic approach to the influences of autobiography. The artist creates his paintings through assembling found images, drawings and images from his personal archive and the works carry a cool, considered quality. This brings us to a central concern of Disquiet: the fragmentary nature of experience and memory and how we look to cultural symbols and forms to reflect the meanings of our personal lives.

William Klose lives and works in Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand. He studied at Edinburgh School of Art and Camberwell School of Art in London. Klose’s solo exhibitions include The Construct Of Chance (2011), H Gallery, Bangkok, Bangkok Cityscapes (2011), Four Seasons Hotel, Bangkok, and Witthayu (2012), H Gallery, Bangkok. Group exhibitions include Lift Off (2003), Catto Contemporary, London, New Urbanites (2004), Catto Contemporary, London, Twist Art and Design (2004), Oxo Tower, London, Hilder Family Show (2006, 2007), Francis iles Gallery, Rochester, UK, Summer Show (2013), H Gallery, Bangkok, and BP Portrait Awards (2014), National Portrait Gallery, London.

 

G 1 CONTEMPORARY is located on the ground floor of Gaysorn Shopping Centre. 
The gallery is open daily from 10 am until 8 pm. 
Gaysorn Shopping Centre, 999 Ploenchit Road, Lumpini, Pathumwan, Bangkok

 

New Paintings by Will Klose
February 4 – March 31 2015