Beijing's Soka Contemporary Space is featuring recent work by Thai artist Natee Utarit in a show called 'Transparency Happiness'. Though this is the Bangkok painter's first solo in China, he will be familiar to those in the Chinese capital who remember several of his pictures from Thai contemporary group exhibition of 2007 'Charm and Chasm'. At Soka Natee presents 10 oils, fresh off the easel. The canvases, all large-scale, continue the exploration of the Thai-specific cultural and socio-political themes first tackled by the artist in his 2007 Bangkok manifestation 'The Amusement of Dreams, Hope and Perfection'.

According to the artist’s statement, it isn’t his intention to explain any kind of idealistic phenomena through the paintings in this exhibit here. That would be asking more of painting than it is capable of achieving. Simply put, all of these paintings were inspired in part by the thoughts he’s elaborated above, using the language and function of art. Anything beyond this he would like to attribute to concepts derived from experience outside the paintings which can explain and answer questions to issues through a process of its own.

Natee's sense of memory and the past led him to the mystification of western civilization in the Asian context: First, a sense of the past, and childhood, in his reference to antique prints and toys; secondly, myths in Thai culture; and finally, Western influence in Thai (and world) history.

The works of Natee Utarit are increasingly sought after, their technical virtuosity seducing a younger generation of art-buyers brought up in the slick and brand-hawking shopping malls of 21st century Asia. But behind Natee's indubitable mastery of paint lies an intellectually rigorous and wholly singular approach to representation that makes him one of the most significant, if misunderstood, artists of his generation. Whereas in the past the questioning of perception, and the modes used to express that questioning, have been at the heart of Natee's search, paintings of the last two years, in addition to their play on artistic language, address Thailand's wider societal concerns. Some of these at Soka (Moonlight Monday, Yellow flag with olive sky) relate to affairs wholly indigenous to the Southeast Asian kingdom and can thus be read in the context of a larger body of Thai contemporary art that puts the critical examination of sources of history at the top of the agenda. Others, (The Shapener; The Green), reflections on consumerism, conformity, greed, war and the meaning of culture, offer universal insights. With these outward-looking canvases has Natee Utarit abandoned painting-as-experirment? Not likely. Instead the artist is adding a layer of thematic substance to his already compelling conceptual repertoire.