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Emerging from the darkness, their expressions are by turns solemn, expectant, reverent, pious, contemplative and hopeful. Captured in a moment of intense emotion and isolated from their surroundings, the figures depicted in the series Goliath could be the protagonists of a religious scene. Yet however serene and beatific their poses and mannerisms may be, these men await a rapture of a decidedly non-religious kind, one more profane than sacred. Illuminated by basic fluorescent lights (particularly widespread in Asia), gathered under a canopy on a humid autumn night, these men are all spectators at a Thai tradition, the beetlefight. Focused on the quasi-altar situated in the middle (on which two male Hercules beetles fight over a female) and photographed in singles or pairs, the actual focus of their attention is never made apparent; the audience members having been deliberately removed from the context of their current raison d’etre furthers the impression of religious iconography (in the more western, Christian tradition) and of the use of chiaroscuro by painters such as Caravaggio.
Apart from its more obvious connotations, the word ‘goliath’ is also a gambling term for a very complicated parlay bet: this, along with the contrast inherent in the aforementioned painting style [...] alludes to the theme of dichotomies present in the work and embodied in its title: light/shadow, sacred/profane, solemnity/passion, agony/ecstasy, east/west, painting/photography, big/small, analogue/digital.
Within all of these we see the push and pull between the extremes and all the drama contained therein; 'Goliath' shows how something somewhat macroscopic can illuminate the large scale.

Artwork -

Goliath