KVT – Le Quy Tong Vol.2…….Catalyst?

(Vietnamese version available – Đã có bản tiếng Việt)

KVT takes a front seat ponders Le Quy Tong as catalyst

Dong Phong Gallery is an intimate little art space in Ly Dao Thanh Street. It’s aura of friendliness makes it one of my favorite places to sit with a proffered glass of tea and view art work that is invariably of impeccable standard and this time work that, for me, was very thought provoking.

I presented a brief retrospective of artist Le Quy Tong’s art work earlier this week and now I want get my head around his latest work…

He’s been experimenting and playing around with his catalystic approach for a couple of years and has had a couple of forays into the local and international art markets with them.

CATALYST: ……..a person or thing that precipitates an event or change.

Le Quy Tong states that: In this exhibition, he does not intend to create a specific message. His only concern is to create a catalyst for thinking and to do this he diverts or alters the initial meaning of a random image. The materials used for his creativity are mainly images from public media and available on the internet. The images could be anything from entertainment, traditional culture to history, world culture or past and present images of sexual-emotional changes.

As I understand it he hopes to be a catalyst by encouraging in viewers new, different or divergent emotional perceptions as they interact with these images. The response could be incredulous, stimulating, even reminiscent. The response could challenge a fundamental personal value.

So I guess question I have to answer is: Has Le Quy Tong’s work been a catalyst for me?

Well I’ve certainly done a lot of thinking about them. Particularly the body of work relating to female erotica in art, usually, but not necessarily, constructed by males…

If I rearrange these erotic pieces in a lineal perspective, I am referred to Japanese Shunga erotic art…. nicely presented here in a clip from the 2013 ‘Sex and Pleasure in Japanese Art’ exhibition at the British Museum

Le Quy Tong seems to have used Shunga as base line to confront the viewer with modern presentations of females in erotic art…..or as many viewers may declaim pornographic art.

Throughout Tong’s small, manipulated prints, females are sexually commodified and exploited. Original print images usually have present day drawn representations of female erotica balancing or subsuming them, sometimes merely suggestive, sometimes blatant.

He hits closer to home with this old but well known erotica, I presume from the French Colonial era, nicely manipulated

His lanky, scantily clad females juxtaposed over limestone karst mountains may be considered by some to be a little too pornographic in the context of Vietnamese art in a Vietnamese art gallery, but within the context of film and video and photo images immediately available on, say, video games, MTV, You Tube, TV commercials, some HBO movies, they could be considered tame and a bit passé.

The mountain print with two almost nude females being swarmed by army tanks is a powerful solar plexus punch reminder of the powerlessness and sexual exploitation of women in war zones…anywhere, anytime in history.

To answer the question…..Le Quy Tong’s work as catalyst……definitely

Now a look at other pieces in the exhibition, sometimes including the above theme. Without getting into Catalyst? or translatory modes, here’s an overview of what else to expect.

Let’s commence with two pieces of his pre catalyst work (not in the Dong Phong Show) that are characteristically dripping paint and potency

….pieces that gain more potency when presented in a small format as a print on top of an easily recognised historical print but now presaging upheaval and change

…and, for me, there is a high emotional quotient attached to this overlaid print

And this nice work, could be full of dire intimations if considered to be referencing borders and resources and lessons from the past

Iconic historical images of revolution have a dominating presence in the gallery. The images were projected onto canvas and copied and manipulated.

Three small works I liked straight away were of the, once upon a time, interior of 32 Trang Tien Street, previous home to Duc Giang Chemical Products. For me, the artist’s overworking of the original image suggested the deleterious effects of many chemicals on unsuspecting environments.

Finally, three works that echo the artist’s interest in manipulating grand architecture

Would I recommend a visit to Dong Phong and Le Quy Tong’s catalyst?

Most definitely!

See also:

KVT – Le Quy Tong………Before the Catalyst
Exhibition “Catalyst” at Dong Phong Gallery