Emerging Thai artist Jirapat Tatsanasomboon employs a pop-art aesthetic, which often feature dichotomies between the East and West, and the modern and traditional. Drawing on iconic images, Tatsanasomboon inserts Thai iconography as a commentary on Thai society, re-interpreting them and using them in an almost guerilla, or 'camouflage' fashion. Tatsanasomboon was recently selected as one of the few Southeast Asian contemporary artists whose work was featured alongside the work of the indisputable father of pop art, Andy Warhol.

Within this work, Tatsanasomboon has constructed a backdrop evoking the colour scheme and pointilistic 'dot matrix' texture of comic-book-turned-fine-artist Roy Lichtenstein. He superimposes a narrative from the revered canonical Hindu text, the Ramayana. Known as the Ramakien in Thai, it has become the national epic in a primarily Buddhist Thailand. Rain or Shine (After R Lichtenstein) (Lot 2608) features the central characters of Rama (Phra Ram) and his wife Shinta (Nang Sida), incarnations of the Hindu gods Vishnu and Lakshmi, now appearing in the guises of Thai heavenly apsaras. Although the Ramayana is primarily a political and moral treatise, it also becomes a love story as Shinta voluntarily insists on following Rama through a long arduous exile in the wilderness. Within Tatsansomboon's composition, the devoted couple is now winding its way through yet another unlikely situation, but this time it is the tongue-in-cheek backdrop of the flat contemporary aesthetic with the pair of lovers morphed into the latest incarnations of cool, comic book superheroes.