If you’re noticing a lot of high-end, complex art on your feeds lately, the reason is Dib Bangkok, the city’s first contemporary art museum—a huge win for Bangkok’s art scene brought to us by the Osathanugrah family.
The three-story warehouse, designed by WHY Architecture, is already turning heads and printing column inches, despite only opening to the public this Sunday. The Dib, from the Thai word meaning “raw”, opening will be a standard bearer for the contemporary art scene in mainland Southeast Asia.
The building itself is set in a 1980s adaptive-reuse warehouse redesigned by Kulapat Yantrasast of WHY Architecture in collaboration with Thailand-based international architectural design firm Architects 49 (A49). The new space, tucked away off Rama IV at the south end of Sukhumvit Soi 40, features eleven galleries over 7,000 square meters.
Photo: "Lotus Sound" by Montien Boonma, Courtesy of Dib Bangkok
For the inaugural exhibition, you can expect works from 40 leading artists such as Montien Boonma, Lee Bul, Anselm Kiefer, and Alicja Kwade under the exhibition “(In)visible Presence”—available through August 3.
The outdoor exhibitions are already drawing eyes from curious Bangkokians, with the 11 stone globes of Alicja Kwade’s Pars pro Toto installation already becoming something of a calling card for this new museum.
Opening day this Sunday will feature artist talks from Paloma Varga Weisz and Pinaree Sanpitak, Marco Fusinato and Sho Shibuya, and Alicja Kwade, and looking ahead, this venue plans to offer curator tours and family workshops.
Photo: Paloma Varga Weisz's "Bumpman on a Tree Trunk" / Courtesy of Dib Bangkok
The current exhibition will be open Thu-Mon 10am-7pm, and tickets can be reserved at the Dib Bangkok website. Along with over 1,000 works from over 200 artists, the new space features the Watthu-Dib Bistro & Bar as an all-day dining space.
For those on the Sukhumvit, Dib Bangkok is operating a 900-square-meter satellite site at Dib26 in Phrom Phong.
