Drawn Together

It took 12 years to open Bangkok’s first modern art museum. It may take even longer to figure out how best to fill it.

Since the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre claimed its place last fall among a row of immense shopping malls, its spiraling white walls have remained largely empty. Bottom-floor spaces meant for art-related retail and classes are still unfilled, and there is no permanent collection as yet. In some sort of self-reflexive homage, the vaunted top gallery is currently exhibiting a 13,000-ft. (4,000 m) trail of protest messages painted on cloth as part of a 2001 artist-led campaign to create the building itself. But at least the Thai capital now has an obvious showcase for such worthy events as the 2nd Bangkok Triennale International Print and Drawing Exhibition — comprising 243 etchings, scratchings, silkscreens, intaglios and experiments from 64 countries, selected from 3,806 entries by a professorial panel at Thailand’s leading art school, Silpakorn University.

In a positive sign for the hosts, Thais have the largest contingent, with the Klimt-like Witaya Put-pong and others upholding a playful realist tradition into the 21st century. Japan’s usual spare abstractions leave the deepest impression. But the show runs a challenging gamut from frank environmental protests to murky tone poems, plus dazzling technical displays like American Karen Kunc’s Amassing Blue, a woodcut that looks more like an overlay of watercolors à la Kandinsky.

Exhibits of this kind, meant largely to encourage developing artists, may not make headlines or advance six-figure sales or reputations. Still, the ambitious competition is vivid proof that the simple act of putting lines to paper still connects humanity to its unconscious feelings and imagination more effectively than the pompous pronouncements of jet-setting conceptualists. Live and videotaped demonstrations of basic lithographic processes add to the grass-roots feel of the show, which runs through June 14. See www.bacc.or.th for more.