If you're walking around Bangkok's Ploenchit district and want a cool, air-conditioned half hour between temples and street food, a small gallery just off Wireless Road is showing one of the more interesting debuts of the season — and it won't cost you a baht.
Kich Gallery, tucked on Soi Ruamrudee 2 a few minutes' walk from BTS Ploenchit (exit 4), is hosting "Nostalgia Surfer", the first solo exhibition by Thai artist Jarb Mongkol. It runs until November 14 and entry is free.
Jarb spent over a decade as a commercial illustrator before quitting to make work entirely on his own terms. The result took a full year: 12 paintings done in airbrush, a technique that gives the images a smooth, dreamlike finish that suits the subject matter well.
The show is built around a fictional character — the Nostalgia Surfer himself — a being who exists beyond the fourth dimension, meaning time. He can move freely between past and future, but instead of fixing anything, he keeps going back to the same moments: the same places, the same songs, the same images. The question driving the work is simple and oddly universal — can a feeling you remember ever actually come back?
There's a second story layered in. While his character surfs backwards through time, Jarb was travelling backwards too, rediscovering a way of making art that had slipped out of his life during his illustration years. The two journeys meet in these 12 canvases.
For travellers, this is exactly the kind of low-effort, high-reward detour that makes a Bangkok neighbourhood visit memorable. Ploenchit is already on most itineraries thanks to its Skytrain connection and the shopping around Central Embassy and CentralWorld. A gallery visit slots neatly into an afternoon — no booking, no ticket, and you can be back on the BTS within the hour. Details and opening info are on the Kich Gallery Facebook page.
Even if contemporary art isn't usually your thing, the time-travel premise and the vintage-tinged airbrush style make this an easy one to enjoy. And free entry means the only real investment is the walk from the station.
