Pramaul Thungprue’s contemporary figurative art is richly textured with detailing done to the very minutest of levels. His close-up portraits filling the canvas to allow a full display of the model’s “tattooed” skin, inside which repeating motifs of fans/scales interplay with mythical creatures, iconography, surreal imagery and folklore. The fans/scales possibly being a reference to Thailand’s dragon scale motifs, for on top of this his style has similarity to the historical murals found within the country’s temples. Thunprue’s artwork is so heavily concentrated in imagery that the more you look, the closer you will find yourself falling within it, till at last all you can see is the culture embedded within the model and not them, the individual lost amongst the details of society. However, the artist has purposefully painted all of this on the models’ skin creating a sense that though you can’t see the individual they still form a part of society, just as it forms them.
Boy, 2017, Oil on Canvas. Pramaul Thungprue. Image is courtesy of
ONARTO.com
Thungprue’s paintings leave an impression that history, tradition, and culture contribute to a person’s identity as much as the modern world of today. His paintings repeatedly showing a comparison between the old and the new, with tattoos of deities sometimes positioned next to “childhood” portraits of family and friends as they represent the current-day idols we look up to. Then there are mythological creatures interspersed with more modernised versions in the form of anime creatures, or a merging of sea monsters with cars – these large automobiles swimming along with fins and tails. Oh, and then there of course robots. Bringing a partnership of 21st century culture with the capturing of culture hundreds of years ago – hinting almost at underlying similarity, whilst celebrating both with equal measure.
Untitled, 2017, Pramaul Thungprue.
These painted portraits are like tapestries of society, Thungprue aptly naming the series Face Stories, for each portrait constructs the sides to an individual’s narrative and through this reference society’s culture and iconography. But what’s most telling in Thungprue’s work is his choice of “tattoos,” his symbolism usually working in tangent with the model’s personality. For though people may experience the same things or similar points within their life, what they take away from it will be different, for example with the portraits of the younger children they have monsters and animals, for a young female teenager its heroines and mermaids. For the adult man there are lords and peasants – an association possibly with wealth and poverty. And in the case of elephant “tattoos” – wisdom. Another features a frail man painted onto the skin of young man; producing a sense of the impending aging our bodies will go through. What Thungprue’s portraits all have in common is to encapsulate, not just the imagination of the young models, but of their futures being built upon the generations that came before.
