Mai Gallery – painting exhibition

Sat 18 Oct 2008, 6pm

DUET – exhibition for 2 artists at Mai Gallery

Duet
Dinh Quoc Vu and Ta Dinh Khiem
Mai Gallery, 3b Phan Huy Chu Alley, Hanoi

Both of them belong to the second post-đổi mới generation. Both followed the 2000-2005 course at the Hà Nội Fine Arts College. Both graduated in 2005.
Seems that their common points just stop at this, considering their painting styles, brush wielding systems, they are a far cry from each other.
Đinh Quốc Vũ quietly deals with household tools: jars, cups, oil lamps, fruit… imbuing them with his meditations on life. He won the third prize at the “Jeune Regard” competition in 2005 organised by L’Espace, the Hà-Nội-based French Cultural Center.
Tạ Đình Khiêm is frankly abstractionist. Wallowing in the hectic rhythm of everyday life, he passionately explores its resonances in his mind.

For all this, beneath their apparent styles quite different from each other, they are fundamentally introspective. In Đinh Quốc Vũ’s painting, a glass of limpid water, a tuft of garlic, a dead little bird… all hint at his cogitations on Being. In Tạ đình Khiêm’s, clashes in everyday life merge in reverberations of the subconscient, giving his work a spiritual dimension. And there, again their paths cross. Two moods contrasting yet complementary to each other. Two parts of a harmonious concert.