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Bangkok might not be famous for graffiti, but if you look carefully you might discover the one or the other piece of art on Bangkok's walls.  Rushing through the bustle and buzz of Bangkok, thousands pass each day by some of the kingdom’s most vibrant, fresh art, but with their gotta-run, gotta-go, gotta-do blinders stuck in stubborn routine, they see nothing. Slow down, open your eyes. At first, you’ll only notice the cheap tags some fool has smeared on a bus stop with the marker from his back pocket. A closer look will reveal a raw art gallery on the streets of Bangkok: trippy cartoon characters and more technically difficult abstract tags of the city’s graffiti and street artists. “It’s all about getting your name up and getting people to recognize it. It’s the same thing as advertising, only they have money, and we don’t,” said Cider, who sprayed his name on freeway walls in California as a teenager, and now on wood panels for exhibits in Bangkok. He has gone corporate himself a few times (just for the dough, of course) – doing work for events for Orange, Nike, Adidas and Levi’s.
JAH, a fifth-year fine arts student at Silpakorn University, first saw graffiti in a magazine. “It was interesting: this art that is bold, yet secretive, yet very public,” said the boy with the sweet face of a cherub topped by a massive mess of dreads. His paintings adorn outdoor walls in Siam Square and the interior of a “Thai rasta” clothing shop called Get Up Stand Up in Suan Lum Night Bazaar.
JAH’s dream canvases? “Something everybody would see for sure: The skytrain or...,” he pauses and his eyes light up. “I want to do an airplane.”
 Some of these artists move from the streets to higher-end galleries and boutiques, including P7, a mousy, soft-spoken guy who will display his works of imaginative glee and black comedy at the new designers’ dream department store on Thonglor, Playground, June 10-30. He uses marker, acrylic and spraypaint on canvas to carve a cast of characters – an Ewok and a personified cloud with a snooker ball for one of its eyes. P7 prefers to paint on old walls, to play the dirty, gritty texture against the clean black lines of his forms and figures.
“I get lost in bliss when I draw. When I see a nice, white clean sheet of paper or a wall, I want to make it mine,” he said.
by alisa and landry
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