- a new feature on the Grapevine: the highly opinionated remarks of one “Kiếm Văn Tìm”, an interested, impartial and informed observer of the Hanoi art scene who (for obvious reasons) wishes to remain anonymous -

Art for Tet

The best visual stuff around town right now is being delivered on the back of motor bikes and small trucks, or along some of the streets like Au Co. Peach trees, cumquat trees, apricot trees, potted flowers of all sorts.

Don’t you just love those golden orbs of grapefruit on some of the trees for rent over the Tet period. Some foreigners rush away at Tet without even a dismissive glance at the fabulousness of the last seven days that starts with the burning of offerings to the kitchen gods and the freeing of golden carp. Ma May street is a treasure trove of red and gold and if you take the effort to wander around slowly (and in some places you can’t go above a snail’s pace) with an unprejudiced eye, it’s all a gorgeously vibrant installation…..some foreigners don’t even buy so much as a peach branch to celebrate….I hope the heavenly Jade entity gets them.
I love these final days of Tet frenzy and want to help the economy and buy all the tacky glitz I can get my hands on…..but I guess it’s a bit like you Christians with Christmas baubles. What do you do with them afterwards?
The eve of Tet is my favorite. The fireworks, the sugar cane sticks, the fresh branches, the smell of incense hanging low….and then the absolute, almost spooky quiet of early Mong Mot, Tet Day.
The art scene at present has no hope of competing. It’s not worth giving opinions on group shows though Studio Tho’s on Saturday was a strong, eclectic throw together of worthwhile, collectable pieces.
The best arty place I’ve seen recently, and perhaps because its as vibrant as the run up to Tet, is the gallery 39 on Ly Quoc Su, not far from Nha Tho. The collection of modern contemporary work is excellent and displayed in the most surprising places. It’s the sort of place you could live in. It makes you feel really comfortable all over, a bit like eating piping hot, shallow fried Banh Trung on a cold winter’s morning.

 

First of 2009

A Black and White Affair

What a good way to be welcomed back to wintry Hanoi. I step off the plane and am taken to the Green Palm Gallery in Trang Tien to see Tran Nhat Thang’s exhibition “Portraits of Freedom“.

It’s a theatrical experience wandering through the gallery, a drama in black and white. In one room you are overshadowed by the large, sometimes huge, black and white canvases that stretch and reach around and above you. At times it’s a relief on the eyes when there’s an occasional softening of the monochromatic palette with warm browns and a few effective, if decorative, splashes of red.

The paintings are almost caligraphic and with the approach of Tet, if you saw them outside the exhibition you may be tempted to look for Confucian meanings. If you approach them as being influenced by western art you would reference the effect of Chinese brush painting on western artists from Picasso to the present. In some ways, to me, many are almost American expressionist abstract artist Joan Mitchell’s without color. They’re the sort of paintings you could live with, almost meditative.

The publicity blurb and (badly) translated prologue puts them in the minimalist school, but I think they are generally too busy to be considered …though in a minimalist designed room some would fit rather well. I’d like to see one or two of the tall triptychs or the expansive, non-stretched canvases on the stark walls of a modern, minimalist foyer of a well designed city building (where oh where in Hanoi?)

It’s an interesting body of work to kick off the solar New Year and I hope that it is a predictor of arty events to come in 2009.  If the invitation is correct it concludes on January 7 after a brief 5 day run – a pity that it ends so soon.

Not all of it works and some pieces are definitely unresolved, but these are offset by the really good pieces. Having so many paintings in every section of the gallery leads, I feel, to sensory overload. Far fewer would have been better.

I’m really looking forward to seeing where this work will lead Thang next, perhaps to pure minimalism. Wherever, it’s bound to be worth seeing. He’s only 37 so I think the best is yet to come.

If you can get your hands on one of the handsome catalogues you’ll almost have another piece of art to grace your coffee table. They’re gorgeous.

Ceramics at Hoan Kiem

The craft village flower exhibits around Ly Thai To Square on Hoan Kiem Lake were pretty and predictable but one that stood out and would be at home in any good gallery was the ceramic street of old houses complete with lamp posts, almost kitsch  but really collectable. It’s worth braving the motorbikes to get a good look.

Another good exhibit to start the year.

Best of 2008

IN MY OPINION – THE BEST ARTY BITS – HANOI 2008

My criterion was exhibitions or performances in Hanoi by Vietnamese nationals, or expats who mostly live full time in Vietnam. Collaborative work with foreign artists was OK but all of the exhibitions/performances by visitors including non-resident Viet Kieu were excluded. This list therefore doesn’t mention all of the excellent input by a host of foreign embassies, their affiliates, and foundations that has immeasurably enhanced Hanoi’s cultural life and experiences.

I hope some discerning arts lovers will add their favorites to this non-definitive list.

TOP OF THE POPS:

FIRE & ICE a collaboration between Vu Nhat Tan, a contemporary (“noise”) music composer and expat video artist Brian Ring.  A one-off outdoor video and live music performance at the old British Council headquarters in Cat Linh.
By far the best piece of art in Hanoi last year and if I included the stuff by any of the foreign artists it would still edge out all of them. Number 1 in the All Comers Top Ten.

AND IN RANDOM ORDER:

Best Internationalist:
Vuong Thao’s living fossil sculptures of the Old Quarter in Hanoi helped put Vietnam’s contemporary art scene on the 2008 international map. His continuing living fossil series (that include Long Bien Bridge, Night Vendors around Long Bien, and those idiosyncratic transport vehicles that were once common around old Hanoi and which are rapidly becoming illegal) continue to fascinate me. Thao’s a top tenner in the All Comers’ list.

Best Public Art:
The mosaics that are being installed along the dyke river road. So far they’re creeping slowly from opposite the Sofitel Plaza towards Long Bien Bridge. Usually I find mosaics a bit of a yawn and find they date quickly, but this project, due to be completed in 2010, is wonderful. I love wandering past the artists and craftspeople who are painstakingly assembling what will definitely become an iconic part of Hanoi.
AND
last winter a mob of local adolescents started to decorate their bicycles with feather boas, streamers, plastic flowers, flashing lights, music etc and of an evening they’d parade and cavort en masse up and down Ba Trieu and Pho Hue. Like any fashion fad or beautiful lepidoptera  it had a brief life but I’m glad I was able to witness its metamorphosis. Hopefully someone took some photos.

Best Music:
The Vietnam National Symphony Orchestra’s performance of Mahler’s Symphony no 3 in D minor at the Hanoi Opera House. This was the orchestra’s icing on a cake that has seen it make some really good music this year, usually under the baton of that personable conductor, Tetsuji Honna.
AND
the fabulous Cracking Bamboo percussion workshop that led to two full house performances at the Opera House by local and international percussionists. You couldn’t help but stamp your feet in appreciation. A Goethe project and a definite top tenner.

Best Performance Art:
Nguyen Anh Tuan (Tuan Mami)’s installation and very restrained performance piece Growing Up at Ryllega, would have to be in the top ten list. I’m now completely besotted with cheap, pre Doi Moi, Chinese wrapping paper. This young man should explode onto the international scene.  He could be Vietnam’s answer to China’s Zhang Huan….Saatchi here he comes!

Best Solo Installation:
see Nguyen Anh Tuan above
AND
also at Ryllega the excellent Everyman by Bradford Edwards . A wooden statue of an anonymous business man, found in TPHCM, and a lot of crumpled A4 paper and invoices made the small space an intriguing place to be in.

Best Group Exhibition:
Nha San Duc +10. A provocative show that would have been in overall number 2 spot if it had been more accessible and on for longer so that we could all have appreciated its brilliance. Could we possibly have a reprise…for at least a month? Exciting to say the least.

Best Dance/Movement:
I’ve seen the National Ballet dance Stravinsky’s Fire Bird twice and each time I’ve been impressed by the company’s ability to rise above the mundane. I keep hoping that the Firebird could be a catalyst towards a modern, contemporary repertoire. What we need is a sugar daddy (or mommy) to underwrite a renowned choreographer so that the company can achieve its evident potential and not be lost in the predictable backing up of patriotic sing songs, dancing old chestnuts like a borrowed Giselle (which they do well), or prancing and posturing in really dreadful popular vocalist performances.

Best Commercial Exhibition:
After a lot of deliberation the prize goes to Nguyen Minh Thanh’s well mounted exhibition at Art Vietnam. He’s one of my favorites in the strong Art Vietnam stable. An engaging, earthily toned show! What Art Vietnam is able to do, because of space and conservational talent, is to always give us exhibitions that are theatrical and often ethereal.

Best Mentorship:
Edging out the great Danes, Goethe, Maison des Arts, Studio Tho, and Bookworm is L’Espace. Their 3 Days 3 Artists program has been innovatively outstanding. Over the year at least 36 young Vietnamese contemporary artists have had the opportunity to show often challenging work. Whoever conceived this program, thanks for your foresight, and please, L’Espace, for the sake of the young and the purpose-driven avant garde artists, please keep it going through 2009.

Best Retrospective:
I can’t go past Goethe’s really powerful exhibition of Le Quang Ha‘s paintings and assemblages. There is a critical group of Vietnamese artists that could benefit from similar, well-curated retrospective shows and often it needs the impartial eye of a non-national to do them justice.

Best Thing to Happen to the Art Scene and Art Person of the Year 2008:
The Grapevine of course and Brian Ring! No medium sized city in the world is more accessed as far as their cultural scene is concerned than we are. When you realize that the tendrils of the vine grow and flourish without corporate input and mainly by one individual’s effort, then you can realize how lucky we are. The innovative push to add a Vietnamese translation to the blog that was realized this autumn is a great breakthrough in a democratization of the local arts.

Best Overall Vision:
I am giving my split vote to the Grapevine (for obvious reasons) and Maison Des Arts. In the latter part of the year the gallery became a bit pre-occupied with the safety of exhibiting foreign/expat stuff but, in this time of economic recession, I hope Madame Nga can afford to keep on with her exciting and often challenging presentation of young, Vietnamese artists. Her Long Bien Bridge Project, although delayed, is really conceptually wonderful. Maison started 2008 brilliantly and their Tet calligraphy performances and subsequent wallpapering of the entrance gallery with the results was enough to put them in my all comers top 10.

Find of the Year:
Thirtyish young man, Dinh Quoc Vu who exhibited his small, almost photo real, oils at Mai’s gallery. Let’s hope for a solo in 2009. All the top commercial galleries should be rushing to sign him up.

And Rating 5 star Mentions:
Cinematheque for giving us the chance to see non commercial releases and for concert pianist Ilya Rashkovskiy whose performance with the VNSO would have delighted Rachmaninof.

The venerable looking Vu Dan Tan at his studio in Salon Natasha in Hang Bong. He’s still one of the most collectable and boundary pushing Vietnamese artists and by far the most realistically priced. Now here’s a national treasure whose retrospective would be a blast, critically and visually. Do include that splayed Cadillac.

Studio Tho for pushing print work to the fore and for lifting young, contemporary VN artists into a professional limelight.

What is Equality? a brave group exhibition that seemed to have had its wings prematurely clipped.

AND, FINALLY, A FEW OF MY ARTY WISHES FOR 2009

• a continuing of arts patronage by foreign embassies – even in the face of conservative changes and policies in so many countries
• less control and interference in what can and can’t be shown and performed
• more courage and oomph by the commercial galleries
• lower prices for art works
• more conceptual art exhibitions
• much more contemporary dance
• a Vietnamese art biennale to get into a planning phase
• a push by corporations (international and local) to give more sponsorship to the contemporary arts in Vietnam
• A flight into fanciful heights for lots of young (and not so) artists

And may it all, in 2009, be as joyous as L’Espace’s wonderful opening party at the Museum of Ethnology for “Printemps Français à Hanoi” where the food installation by Cie Mirelaridaine was a delight before and during the ravenous onslaught and the music of Dai-Lam-Linh was ravishingly and deliciously different.

KVT – final comments for this year

It’s that time of the year when, even if you’re not a Christian, you wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a happy solar new year and you enjoy the over the top decorations, effervescently twinkling fairy lights, visions of snow, candy canes, bedecked and bejeweled Christmas trees, loud musac carols and very slim Vietnamese Santas before your mind switches completely into lunar mode and you begin the countdown to Tet and visions of peach blossoms, cumquat trees and water buffalo. As I’m off to join the revelers in the sun and sea at a small resort way down south where the coconut palms are waving in warm island breezes here’s my last opiniony bits for 2008…………………….

Most private art galleries have shifted into holiday mode and have their walls festooned with work from their collections and back rooms but they’re still worthwhile checking out. Art Vietnam has a strong back up to choose from, Hanoi Studio in Trang Tien looks interesting and if StudioTho has a group show and you’re in Hanoi then it would be a good one to catch. Maison Des Art’s Long Bien Bridge collection is always strong.

As for solos, well there’s………………………………………………………………………………..

LOVE and MARRIAGE at the Bookworm’s non profit art space. When you walk into the shop and gallery you feel that you are in the midst of the Wedding Season and the best bits of Christmas. Young artist Le Chi Hieu’s delightful paintings on diep paper are brimming with fantasy and joy.  The ones that are in huge but uncomplicated gilt frames are real showy baubles that would look fabulous on anyone’s wall (including mine because at the really reasonable prices I don’t think I’ll be able to resist temptation).They are offset by four pieces hanging in unframed  simplicity that would look equally fabulous mounted in a sandwich of clear glass
You could ask the handsome young man behind the counter to show you the well presented volume on traditional Tranh Tho altar paintings that Hieu uses as a motivation.

A Walk with the Artist’s Soul at V Art Space is a surrealist and very painterly jaunt by Vu Thang Nghi. I liked looking at the work which, in retrospect, I’ve come to call the Don Quixote series with its seemingly armor clad figures jousting with the hand to mouth realities of life that 80% of the population in Vietnam has to contend with. Vu is a very accomplished painter and it’s usually a delight to get up close and enjoy his brushstrokes.
It’s an exhibition well worth seeing and a serious collector would probably return for second and third looks, but the prices, in this era of recession, are a bit like the windmills that Quixote tackled….a bit gianty.
However, the publicity post cards of artists’ work put about by V Art Space are almost collector’s items in their own right. Try and get the ones for Vu’s work.

Equality? At the Fine Arts University was an excellently curated showing of mainly conceptual art and often offered serious comment. Many of the pieces made you stop and ponder, which is the outcome that most non commercial, contemporary art exhibitions strive towards.
Just when I’d told all my friends to rush in and catch it, it closed after a run of only ten days. As my Vietnamese compatriots will and would declaim, “What a pity!”

From Me to all readers of this blog, have a happy, peaceful and not too commercial Christmas, and a fireworkingly pleasant  beginning to the New Year.

on 10+ at NhaSan, the Danes, and Hip Hop

FAR, FAR, FAR TOO GOOD TO MISS

It’s brilliant to have an outstanding Vietnamese group exhibition to round off the year. Perhaps it augers well for 2009 when the buffaloes will be taking charge.

The 10th anniversary of Nha San Duc, tucked away in its delightful stilt house in the back streets of Ba Dinh, was a crowded affair with a good mix of locals and foreigners swarming up the rickety stairs and along wobbly verandahs. The first sight of a great performance piece and friends tearing into fresh baked loaves resembling slightly engorged male appendages, followed by a communion of onlookers hungrily gobbling the crusty, white bread, was an anticipatory entree for the other installations. Its questioning of the diminishing status of boys in a patriarchal society that is slowly becoming more sophisticated in its gender attitudes from the upper crust down, was wonderful.

What did I enjoy most in this virtuoso display by several generations of local avant garde artists who have benefited from the fact that this place exists, and Veronica Radulovic and Brian Ring representing the many foreign artists who have participated in it and learnt from it? Was it Nguyen Van Phuc’s set of melting ice blocks with incense in altar bowls embedded within, or Nguyen Trinh Thi’s powerful but gentle video of her grandmother’s bones being unearthed and cleaned? Perhaps Vu Hong Ninh’s faceless altar statues, or Nguyen Huy An’s dress reduced to ashes, or the fabulous cube of Pham Ngoc Duong…..????? Too much to choose from and nothing was less than very good. For the first time ever in Hanoi, all the video installations held me in their grip and the documentary on the 10 years of Nha San Duc is compulsive viewing for anyone interested in Hanoian contemporary art.

If we could chew up all the red tape and spit it onto a table (idea from another excellent piece) we’d have the nucleus here for a Hanoi biennale of contemporary art. If anyone can remember China Inside Out when it broke free of prescription and toured the world late last century and the way it put Chinese art and artists onto the world map will realize that the Nha San Duc exhibitors could be leading Vietnamese art in the same eventual direction.

A discussion and performance piece closes the exhibition on Sunday 14.

THE REALLY GREAT DANES

Lots of foreign Embassies and their offshoots do brilliant stuff for the arts in Vietnam but it’s the Danes and their really progressive ambassador who have continually provided grants and assistance to local experimental artists so that their new work can be done and exhibited. You’d be amazed if I listed all the art and artists they’ve supported this year. The Nha San Duc exhibition is another bit of Danish cream on our art scene. It is really exceptional to see support for the arts like this at a grass roots level. Mr Ambassador you are a marvel!

HIP HOPPING TO GREAT THINGS

Soon Vietnam could have a dance company that will take Hip Hop from its street cred ‘look at me! look at me!’ scene, into the realm of legit contemporary dance. If you missed the performances this week at the Youth Theater you were a bit silly. The drama was good and even the Vietnamese hip hopping fans and their parents were impressed with the outstanding choreography by the young German and French choreographers. The set design was super, the balance of modern and traditional Vietnamese music with onstage musicians was brilliantly conceived.

If the Danes are great then so too are Goethe and L’Espace for providing funds and training for what could well become a Vietnamese art touring group. A bit more experience and a few ballet lessons and the company could Zing into dance stratospheres.

Long Bien Crazies and BLOOD on the SIDEWALKS

What an extra-ordinary week. The European Music Festival at the Youth Theatre was extra-ordinarily brilliant and the jazz and blues vibes blowing through my mind have almost put me into a latent soporific mood of cat-like contentment, so much so that I have to really force myself to bare my claws.

Long Bien Crazies

The Danish documentary about a month long, un-opinionated observation of the Long Bien Bridge I’ve seen before and thought it a really brilliant piece of art, not only a superb piece of documentary filmmaking. So when a friend gave me a transcript of the audience question time after the showing at the cinematheque last week I was flabbergasted. Some people wanted a revisionist type film with all gritty reality removed; others were disappointed that the flower market wasn’t featured; some seemed to think that it didn’t portray enough of modern Hanoi; others seemed to want more emphasis on the grand old colonial times …which were never grand for most locals. To me it seems that a lot of people need to take their blinkers off, put away the rose tints, get out of the chauffer drivens and start to look around real Hanoi….no, my dears, not West Lake or Ha Hoi or, god forbid, Ciputra….go for a walk along the turgid alleys and byways where the majority of the workers live. See the poverty, the unhygienic conditions, the maltreatment of females…..Then see the documentary again and realize its brilliance.

BLOOD on the SIDEWALKS

I was forced to miss a night of the Europeans because I promised a relative of a friend of a cast member of Blood Brothers that I’d go along and see her in it.

Now I know a lot of you will say that I should only say nice things because after all they’re only amateurs trying their hardest, but after all the hard sell, I believe they deserve a bit of an opinionated crit and I hope a few of you will challenge my findings.

Blood Brothers was written in 1981 as a school musical. With adaptations it transferred (a bit reminiscent of Joseph and His Technicolor Dreamcoat) to the West End where it’s played to a cult following for the past 20 odd years.

The Hanoi production was much more school play than West End. Everyone in the cast had a good time and no-one had to bother with that difficult Liverpudlian accent. It was a tad turgid in length and I was so glad when the final stirring song was dramatically concluded and I could clap and leave.

Now I’ve never been to a HITS show before to compare previous standards but I really do think that a play has to be chosen to fit the abilities of the performers, and this one decidedly wasn’t.

But… the orchestra was really good, restrained and professional… Michael Hoy, the narrator and devil’s advocate stole the show with great presence and voice. Kate Cameron as Mam has a brilliant voice and was a down to earth main lead with a strong Aussie accent. I’d love to see David Cameron in a role that would allow him to play an adult.

The most perplexing aspect of the production for me was why on earth the stage crew, who are supposed to be invisible, had a BIG white CREW printed across their backs. Or perhaps I was a bit more perplexed by the director’s insistence of putting Vietnamese colloquialisms into the script.

But congratulations all and keep on going. With so many young up and comings I could envisage a spunky punky type show with lots of energetic dance….just hope for a good choreographer.