KVT – The Dark Side vs the Lighter? Side at the Art Museum

KVT contemplates oxygen starvation and dark faces

Had a good time observing people at the free downstairs gallery at the Art Museum on Friday afternoon. A fair few viewers were there to see the exhibition by Le Nguyen Manh and Dang Xuan Hung, both experienced artists in their mid thirties.

The last time I caught up with the surrealistically tinged work of Le Nguyen Manh was in 2011 at the now defunct Bui Gallery. Then I was delightfully captured by the artist’s impish humor and I imagined myself in a Weimar Kabaret being devilishly directed by the intriguing character below

Two elements in Manh’s paintings that cross over from 2011 to 2014 are dragon flies and military style gasmasks…..

A majority of Manh’s large nudes are all masked and accompanied by an insect or animal

Just about all of the viewers when I was with the exhibitions were crowded into the gallery devoted to Manh’s large nudes and small surreal canvasses…but when viewers began to contemplate nudes wearing gasmasks and wonder if the nudes were:

A: wearing gasmasks because they live in Hanoi which a very reputable source recently declared was the most air polluted city in South East Asia

B: wearing gasmasks because they enjoy sadomasochistic adventures

C: wearing gasmasks because their sexual partners are into a particular type of bondage

……and then realizing that they were being observed contemplating the gas masked nudes by other viewers, some decided to focus their stares on the non nuded, surreal canvasses along an opposite wall which were all concerned with contemplating global warming on Vietnamese lowland areas. And the one I really liked was this very clever piece:

Now another problem for a lot of viewers may have been that Manh’s bright and light filled canvasses were in the second gallery, the entrance and exit to which meant passing through gallery one which was full of huge, grey tainted, swirly portraits – bits of which are below- and which seemed to give a few viewers the willies (these being the viewers who initially found themselves sighing with relief when they escaped from what they imagined to be a space inhabited by the black dog of depression to the illusion of brightness)

These very dramatic portraits by Dang Xuan Hung, with skin surfaces alive and moving had the brave viewers up close and personal to get acquainted with the personalities involved

Hung had labeled his body of work The Dark Side which, to a lot of viewers loaded it with melanchonic connotations of depression and mental disorders and hence a modicum of discomfort and squirming amongst them (the viewers that is)

Being one of those who got up very close, I admit to enjoying being around Hung’s faces with most of the recent portraits being more involving than earlier works on show from 2011

My imagination was working overtime as soon as I entered the gallery and I decided that, given a suitable art space, I’d have presented the Dark Side portraits of Dang Xuan Hung in a pitch black space with a timed spot light picking out one portrait, or portion of a portrait, at a time, allowing the occasional flash of background color to glow like a orange, green or red gemstone.

Then entering the oxygen deprived, light side world of Le Nguyen Manh, the sound of a person breathing heavily through a gasmask would fill the gallery (a bit like most of the soundtrack from the recent movie’ Gravity’ which I must admit I didn’t enjoy half as much as the visual work of Le Nguyen Manh, and in particular that of Dang Xuan Hung)

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