Souled Out Studios
Founded in 2003, Bangkok, Thailand
Souled Out Studios (SOS) is an international distributor of fine urban artwork established in 2003 in Bangkok, Thailand. SOS specialize in producing limited-edition prints as well as originals from artists like Alex Face, Mue Bon, Beejoir, Lucas Price, Candice Tripp, Paolo Canevari, Torlarp Larpjaroensook.
SOS is an organization run by a close group of street artists and friends from many countries working together to provide the public with stunning visual treats at reasonable prices in Bangkok to publish their artwork worldwide. This organization has been established for 15 years initiated by Chris Bauden (known as Beejoir) and Jon Michael Vogel, they strongly wants to support street art by having Thai and International artists from various background and working style.
They start from a studio focusing on publishing mainly silkscreen art before expanding to creating art in different styles. SOS has successfully exhibited worldwide with many followers following their portfolio. SOS spend most of their spare time either plotting to take over the world or supporting charities that could at least improve it for the better.
SOS just held the latest exhibition during the start of 2018 called SOS Art Exhibition by Souled Out Studios in Bangkok City City Gallery, marking the 15-year milestone of the studio which was an exploration of the complicated nature of ‘Community’, highlighting environmental, social, and economic crises within societies.The exhibition transformed Bangkok City City Gallery into an immersive cityscape, informed by a world view often misguided by new social pressures, ever transient communities and financial constraints. SOS reveal a snapshot into a creative community of lives from the animal, fantasy and bitingly ‘real’ world in true-to-form Souled Out Studios fashion; sometimes humorous, irreverent and almost always topical.
Members that are attending the Bangkok Art Biennale 2018 are as follows:
Alex Face (Patcharapol Tangruen)1981, Thailand
Patcharapol Tangruen, also known as Alex Face, is a well-known and influential graffiti artist in Thailand.
Alex studied architecture at Bangkok’s King Mongktut Institute of Technology. He earned a Bachelor’s Degree on a Department of Fine & Applied Arts. An interest in architecture led Alex Face to explore and wander the streets and alleys of Bangkok for abandoned buildings, buildings that he eventually used as a canvas to develop his street art and where he could express himself. He then created Alex Face, a character with an aged, disillusioned child’s face wearing animal costumes. Through his graffiti, Alex Face especially attempts to create a link with the urban population, the underprivileged of Bangkok and the provinces. He now includes images of penguins that have since become famous into his graffiti.
Alex consider himself as an artist with a social conscience. His current signature, a quizzical smoking baby who looks wise beyond his years at first glance cute but all the time worrying about the future of the world. The baby idea was inspired by the birth of his daughter. “The first time I saw her she looked angry or worried” he told me. It made him why she looked like that, causing him to reflect on the life she had ahead. “I thought are you not happy to be my daughter? Are you not happy to be in the world?” Ultimately this world changing personal event had caused Alex to consider the future and in particular to take stock of the changes happening in his own country, the country in which she would grow up.
He draws the baby with a third eye, as well: “I believe in the spirit, that is how I grew up, I feel the spirit” he says. The third eye in his drawings represents another dimension “it’s something that we can feel but can’t see with two eyes so I add the third eye which can see what we can’t”.
Mue Bon 1982, Thailand
Mue Bon is a Bangkok-based street artist who works in painting, installation, and mixed media. As a member of Thailand’s early generation of street artists, Mue Bon began painting at a time when street art in his country was neither well known nor respected. Without creative agencies, big brands, or fine art galleries seeking out their skills, street artists were left with little financial incentive to continue their work. Regardless, Mue Bon continued creating work in the streets, motivated by his desire to elevate the status of street art in his country by making art accessible to the public.
As street art became more popular in Thailand, businesses began to see commercial opportunities for street art collaborations. An impressive art piece on the wall meant that more customers and tourists would be attracted to the place of business. Mue Bon says, “The business owners would become curators too. They felt that, in a sense, this artwork belonged to them as well because it was on their property, so they would be able to talk to their customers about street art, the artist, and the story behind the artwork. Even the lady selling fried bananas on the corner would become a street art curator.”
Over the years, Mue Bon has created a cast of signature characters that he paints on the street and the canvas, including a cartoon bird, a girl behind a mask, and Mr. TV, a man with a television screen for a face. Despite their cute appearance, all of Mue Bon’s works contain commentary on social issues, including wealth disparity and inequality, the influence of media and propaganda, and anti-war activism. His iconic Mickey Mouse skull stickers and wheat pastes are the artist’s version of a memento mori – a reminder to find peace, meaning, and a sense of humor in the face of our inevitable mortality. Today, Mue Bon’s work can be seen not only throughout Thailand but has also made its way around the world.
Beejoir1979, UK
Beejoir hails from humble beginnings in the South West of England where he spent his youth.
Entirely self-taught, his early days working on the street left him open to the use of vernacular materials and processes to display and deploy his desired message. Initially painting in the UK and Europe before moving to and settling in Asia in 2007 to forge a new lifestyle and begin his career as a full time artist. From there came Souled Out Studios now one of the world’s leading publishers and supporters of Street Art, co-founded by Beejoir.
Using varied practice’s and methods of installation, sculpture, painting, spray painting and drawing with strong juxtaposition to explore modern society, conveying the way in which he sees the changing world around him and where he sees it heading…
Beejoir developed his interest in human traits with strong references to greed, self-indulgence and the breakdown of community while travelling continually throughout Europe, Africa and Asia in the late 90’sand early 00′ being exposed to the stark contrasts of the overtly rich as well as crippling poverty which often sit side by side… references from those times can be clearly seen in his early works.
He has successfully shown, curated and exhibited in over 70 solo and group shows across the world in some of the leading private galleries, institutions and auction houses, being recognized in ‘Beyond the Street the worlds 100 leading figures in street art’, as well as featuring in academic papers and popular culture blogs such as Kanye Wests ‘KanyeUniverCity’ Wooster Collective.
Credited as ‘making 2013 Frieze weeks most irreverent work’ by Financial Times critic Rachel Spence, Beejoir’s never stepped far from controversy, with hard hitting images such as the iconic ‘LV Child’, ‘Money Trap’, ‘Saatchi & Saatchi Punch & Judy’ and in 2015 producing his large scale installation #NRCSSM an immersive show questioning our relationship with narcissism in the digital age at the Bangkok CityCity Gallery.
He now spends his time equally between Asia and Europe, producing his own work as well as advising and curating gallery shows for some of the leading artists in the street art movement.
Lucas Price 1980, UK
Born in 1980, Lucas Price pursued an early interest in graffiti, and found himself expelled from school for it. After becoming involved in Manchester’s early house music scene, he drifted into an underworld life culminating in a period of addiction.
Funding his way via a talent for forgery, it was ten years before he returned to art after periods ofjail and homelessness. With a new appetite for creativity, he quickly became involved in the burgeoning street art scene in London, forming the noted Burning Candy crew, including Tek 33, Sweet Toof and Rowdy. Lucas Price work was shown at Tate Modern gallery as part of its 2008 exhibition Art on the Street. Invited by Banksy to appear in Exit Through the Gift Shop, he was arrested during filming. The resulting footage was included in the documentary’s final cut. After a series of shows and painting around the world he enrolled in the hugely respected Royal College of Art, being accepted without any prior training or education. He completed a three year masters’ degree.
Lucas Price, formerly known as Cyclops, started his career as a street artist but soon expanded his work to include fine art imagery. He has become known for his exceptional prints and contemporary photographs in which he combines photo-realism with portraiture, religious imagery and text-based motifs.
Although his works were often influenced by Baroque and Renaissance masters, the artist turned to various sources within contemporary culture for inspiration. In his latest body of work Lucas Price takes poetry as his starting point and uses inert objects and associative words to further develop his unique visual language.
Candice Tripp1985, South Africa
Candice Tripp was born in Cape Town, South Africa and moved to London in 2004 in pursuit of a career in fashion. Whilst working as a graphic designer in Newcastle upon Tyne she found herself focusing more and more on her paintings and by 2007 she started exhibiting her artwork across the UK and USA.
At 21, her darkly humorous paintings caught the eye of a local gallery who provided the platform for her first solo show. At 22, her work was being exhibited in LA.
Entirely self-taught, her ever-evolving practice now extends to include etching, sculpture, brass work, full scale installation and most recently jewelry design. She has had solo shows in London and New York and recently provided the artwork for Arrow Video’s release of Donnie Darko.
Candice Tripp creates oil and ink visions of eerie fairy tales and childhood imagery. Her works use a negative white space as background, drawing the viewer in to illustrations that could seemingly be found in the pages of any classic children’s book. Sedate children and their animal companions are stylishly executed in miniature, and give vision to the lessons and warnings of fables. Beautiful, illustrative, and dark, it is the very strangeness and richness of these figures that beckons us into their enchanted world where we can allow our imagination to build the content of their bizarre and gently humorous action
โซล เอาท์ สตูดิโอ
กลุ่มศิลปินนานาชาติก่อตั้งปี พ.ศ. 2546 ที่กรุงเทพมหานคร พำนักและทำงานที่ กรุงเทพฯ ประเทศไทย
โซล เอาท์ สตูดิโอ (SOS- Souled Out Studios) กลุ่มศิลปินสตรีทอาร์ตที่มีที่มาจากหลายประเทศ และทำงานร่วมกันในกรุงเทพฯ เพื่อเผยแพร่ผลงานของพวกเขาให้เป็นที่รู้จักไปทั่วโลก SOS ก่อตั้งมากว่า 15 ปี โดยการริเริ่มของศิลปินสตรีตอาร์ต คริส บาวเดน หรือ Beejoir และ จอน-ไมเคิล โวเกล พวกเขาตั้งใจสนับสนุนงานสตรีทอาร์ต โดยมีสมาชิกที่ประกอบด้วยศิลปินไทยและต่างชาติจากหลากหลายที่มาและพื้นฐานการทำงาน
พวกเขาเริ่มจากสตูดิโอที่เน้นการสร้างงานภาพพิมพ์ซิลค์สกรีนเป็นหลัก ก่อนจะขยับขยายมาสร้างงานศิลปะในหลายรูปแบบมากขึ้น SOS จัดแสดงนิทรรศการขนาดใหญ่มาแล้วทั่วโลก มีผู้ติดตามผลงานของพวกเขามากมาย
โดยเฉพาะผู้ที่สนใจศิลปะที่สะท้อนและสร้างบทบาทในสังคม นอกจากนี้เวลาว่างจากการทำงานของแต่ละคน ก็จะมาร่วมกันทำกิจกรรมเพื่อการกุศลอีกด้วย
สมาชิกกลุ่มที่เข้าร่วมแสดงงานในเทศกาล บางกอก อาร์ต เบียนนาเล่ 2018 ได้แก่
ALEX FACE (พัชรพล แตงรื่น) เกิดปี พ.ศ. 2524, ฉะเชิงเทรา
MUEBON (มือบอน) เกิดปี พ.ศ. 2525, กรุงเทพมหานคร
BEEJOIR (บีฌัวร์) เกิดปี พ.ศ. 2522, สหราชอาณาจักร
LUCAS PRICE (ลูคัส ไพรซ์) เกิดปี พ.ศ. 2522, สหราชอาณาจักร
CANDICE TRIPP (แคนดีซ ทริปป์) เกิดปี พ.ศ. 2528, แอฟริกาใต้
พวกเขาเพิ่งมีนิทรรศการครั้งล่าสุดร่วมกันเมื่อต้นปี 2561 ที่ผ่านมาชื่อ SOS Art Exhibition by Souled Out Studios ที่ Bangkok City City Gallery กรุงเทพฯ ซึ่งเป็นปีที่ก่อตั้งกลุ่มมาครบ 15 ปี เป็นการแสดงผลงานหลากหลายรูปของสมาชิกในกลุ่ม ทั้งงานประติมากรรม จิตรกรรมสื่อผสม และศิลปะจัดวางขนาดใหญ่ ซึ่งล้วนเต็มไปด้วยพลังและความคิดสร้างสรรค์ ยิ่งไปกว่านั้น ความน่าสนใจของนิทรรศการคือการพูดถึงปัญหาของชุมชนในกรุงเทพฯ ในหลายๆ จุดโดยเฉพาะชุมชนริมแม่น้ำ ที่กำลังเผชิญผลกระทบจากการจัดผังเมืองใหม่ และนโยบายพัฒนาริมฝั่งแม่น้ำของเมือง หากแต่ว่าพวกเขาก็สื่อออกมาอย่างมีอารมณ์ขัน เข้าใจง่ายไม่ซับซ้อน แต่ในขณะเดียวกันก็ท้าทายและชวนให้ผู้ชมกลับไปคิดต่อ เพื่อสร้างแรงบันดาลใจหรือส่วนร่วมในการสร้างความเปลี่ยนแปลงให้กับสังคม