KVT – Up in Print at the Art Museum

KVT gets over excited about a print collaboration between Vietnam and Belgium

What a great show! With the crowds flowing in to the galleries at the Art Museum you could even consider calling it a block buster.

This is going to be the type of opinion piece where the adjective WONDERFUL could to be given a heavy workout ….my images don’t do justice to the prints but when you see them in real life you’ll be totally (and wonderfully) amazed

Printmakers from Belgium and Vietnam have been having a printmaking dialogue and the resulting discussion points were pictorially exhibited at galleries in Belgium last year

Now it’s our turn and until the 20th lovers of prints, lovers of good fine art and printmaker of all shades should get long to see the work of 13 excellent practitioners.

It was really nice to welcome back an artist who, a few years ago, used to display her printed fabric sculptures in some established places and some wonderfully weird pop up spots that, briefly, were a bit of a feature of the Hanoi art scene. Virginie Faivre ‘Arcier’s work has kept its wonderful edge and texture and is a wonderful way to be welcomed into the exhibition

Vietnamese artist Pham Khac Quang has quite outstanding and breathtakingly large wood cut prints on show and these alone are worthwhile rushing along to see in real life.

The two super real interior scenes take your breath away and his reductionist woodprints of village gates are extraordinarily engrossing

An artist intriguingly named Habib Harem has a series of mixed technique prints on rusted metal. The numerous pieces are punctured, engraved and even enlaced and immediately caught my eye and kept drawing me back. It’s called RUST and INK

In the second gallery a bold series of black and white woodcuts BIRDS by Michel Barzin was another total stunner

Local print making maestro, Le Huy Tiep who has a delightful predilection for my favorite insect, the dragonfly, catches them in full flight in his series of prints that utilize silkscreen, monotype and lithographic techniques. The series is punctuated with a dramatic planetary print

A series of delicate and intricate TAROT CARDS by Martine Monfort takes a long time to wander past with a lot of delightful wondering and any Tarocchin players or mystics wandering past would want the whole lot.

Coffee sipper Nguyen Nghia Phung does wonderful things using the beverage as an art medium

Another lithographer, Marie-France Bonmariage, has a series of ethereal, pink flower bouquets that almost seem to waft a perfume from their disappearing depths

The small acquatint and engraving prints by Ngo Anh To, particularly the copses of tall trees, are just about too wonderful for words and if you ever see this artist’s delicate work on sale you’d be sensible to snap it up

Pol Authom has outstandingly brazen pieces based on CASTLES using carborundum intaglio

He also has computer generated prints in long strips that are also excitingly enticing – it must be all that bold black and white that grabs me…but then I’ve always been a sucker for the Kline type line.

Phan Hai Bang has made woodcut prints on traditional paper very beautifully installed like pages from an illuminated manuscript.

Finally there’s the very large TEARS OF THE WORLD. These delicate yet powerful lithographs by Chantel Hardy provide a really nice counterpoint to the other works on show in the first gallery

AN EXCELLENT COLLABORATION….a totally worthwhile dialogue…..in fact, WONDERUL