Bangkok's Charoen Krung riverside strip has another reason to pull in the art crowd. Thai-Japanese artist and designer Hiroka Limviphuvadh opens her new exhibition "Behind My Eyes" at the RCB Photographers' Gallery on the 2nd floor of River City Bangkok, at Charoen Krung 24. It runs daily from 10am to 8pm until October 31.
The premise is a personal one: Hiroka paints the images that form inside her head — the countless pictures waiting to be captured, arranged and turned into works. Viewers get to explore the stories and images that surface in the moments just before sleep and during meditation, the hazy territory where the mind throws up fragments that usually fade fast.
Hiroka began recording what emerged during those moments, selecting certain fragments to reinterpret through drawing. Sometimes the images are vivid enough that every detail can be remembered; other times they stay blurry and vanish quickly. For her, drawing isn't just a way to preserve what she sees. She revisits images again and again, looking at them from different perspectives and letting the story lead her onward. It's also a way of spending more time with them.
What makes the show interesting is how it evolves. As she keeps drawing, images that once seemed unrelated start revealing connections. Something appearing in one picture may return in another, while stories that looked separate slowly begin to intertwine. Each image carries its own narrative but also leaves something behind for the next one to pick up. Eventually the whole collection forms a world — one that, the exhibition suggests, isn't just a world within the artist, but another dimension vibriating at the same frequency as the universe itself.
If that sounds pleasantly abstract, the setting makes it an easy detour. River City Bangkok is the city's long-established art and antiques shopping complex on the Chao Phraya River, and the Charoen Krung neighbourhood around it has become the capital's creative corridor, packed with galleries, cafes and converted shophouses. You can pair the exhibition with a browse of the building's antique dealers, then walk down to the riverside or hop a boat to somewhere like the old town.
For travellers, it's the kind of small, free-flowing cultural stop that slots neatly into a Bangkok itinerary: indoors and air-conditioned when the afternoon heat peaks, open every day including weekends, and within easy reach of Chinatown and the temple districts across the river. Art fans will get the most out of it, but anyone curious about how a working artist processes dreams and half-sleep into something on paper will find it a rewarding hour.
The show is on until the end of October, so there's a real deadline if it's on your list.
