Over the course of his career, Swiss artist Pirmin Breu has always drawn inspiration and creative energy from new places and Bangkok has been no exception. He's been visiting here for years and finds in the city a dichotomy that stimulates him. He compares Bangkok to Mexico City, saying that in the latter "you can see the corruption as soon as you land", but he also finds a positive energy in both conducive to creativity.
Breu, who is in town through October, most recently displayed works that present the influence Thailand has had on his art with the "Space in Between" series shown at Siam Paragon for three days last week. The display was part of the "Siam Nitasratchamongkol" exhibition to mark HM the King's 84th birthday and the 80th anniversary of Thai-Swiss diplomatic relations.
In it, Breu combines elephants with Alpine figures and cows. The five paintings merge into one another, as they were originally part of the same long piece of plywood. A boy in traditional clothing leads a herd of goats, while a girl drives the animals from behind. They are followed by herdsmen and cows with their bells, and a farmer with a cart full of equipment. These are typical images of the Alpaufzug (the annual springtime processions back up the slopes in the Alps for farmers and their animals). Leather trousers, vests and braces and other motifs combine with lace and leather templates and interweave with Buddhist figures from traditional shadow puppet theatre.
The cattle procession changes to an elephant caravan with gold leaf reminiscent of Thai temples. The spaces in between are filled with colour.
The mix of imagery, Breu explains to Brunch, symbolises the bond between Switzerland and Thailand over 80 years of diplomatic relations. The Thais and Swiss, he adds, are more similar in their fundamental structures than you might think, and he feels very comfortable here.
Breu began drawing inspiration from foreign locales at a young age. From the canton of Aargau in Switzerland, Breu became interested in drawing, gilding and then graffiti art, still a nascent art form in Europe at the time.
"Modern graffiti became popularised through its relationship with the New York subway," he says.
So he went to New York to spray walls and railway wagons. Though graffiti in the US is still somewhat associated with criminality, he says he found graffiti integral to learning from youth pop culture and applying it to his own style.
Through the stimulus of Mexico City, where he also stayed for a few months, he found a diversity of impressions and further creative energy, as well as in South America and around the world on his travels. He painted on walls and trains and discovered canvas as a medium.
Using aerosol, airbrush or paintbrush, his work arises from immediacy, he says. He equates the process to inner pressures being discharged in the act of spray-painting. Breu is probably best know for simply drawn, vivacious beings he refers to as "my people". Despite their simple lines they are full of movement, with reduced detail reminiscent of cave art. He has even been commissioned to spray his pop art onto commercial planes.
On returning home after several years of travel, he found it necessary to rediscover his Swiss roots. Drawing now from imagery of Appenzell, a traditional Alpine region, he often paints depictions of local crafts and traditional dress. Increasingly he uses gilding in his paintings, a skill he learned as a young man, and he has become enthusiastic about using paper silhouettes and lace as stencils.
The word Alpaufzug can be broken up into component elements to also mean "Alps on the train" _ thus in a sense describing graffiti of Swiss images on railway wagons, or Breu's style of pop art. The combinations are adaptable to fit Thai images such as elephants and the kaleidoscopic colours he senses around him in Bangkok.
This city appeals to him, he says. Staying on Sukhumvit Road, he finds the diversity interesting, as well as the creative inspiration in slum areas and friendliness elsewhere, as well as in the burgeoning artist communities.
He has worked on several projects in Thailand such as "Silent Witnesses", through which he tried to digest the tsunami disaster of 2004.
"I want to use art to take some of my experiences back to Europe and show them how Thailand is, since they often have no idea about what it's like here."
Since 1993, Breu has had around 61 solo and group exhibitions in Switzerland, Germany, France, the US, Mexico and Argentina.
Also part of the event at Siam Paragon were photographs from the royal archives of HM the King's childhood in Switzerland and his years studying at the Universite de Lausanne, juxtaposed with modern photos of Switzerland as well as other artists' contributions and activities to raise funds for the Ananda Mahidol Foundation. Artists contributing to the exhibition included Liliane Zumkemi, Thaiwijit Peungkasemsomboon, Chatchawan Rodkhlongton and Nai Dee Chang Mo.
Pirmin Breu will be in Bangkok until October. For information about his exhibitions, visit www.pirminbreu.ch.
