KVT – final comments for this year
KVT – final comments for this year
KVT, Grapevine’s undercover correspondent out and about in the Hanoi art scene has a few final thoughts as 2008 draws to a close.
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.
