KVT – Talent Prize 2010 Exhibition of 8 Finalists

The Talent Prize 2010 for painting at the University of Fine Arts Gallery is a MUST MUST see exhibition!

Three expert judges, local and overseas, have chosen 8 young Vietnamese finalists from a bevy of 165 hopefuls from all over the nation and each finalist has a series of their work hung in the gallery—which, though not a perfect space, has been utilized to its best potential.

The Prize Winner will be chosen by voting online and though I was skeptical of this process being able to choose the very best artist, after seeing the finalist’s exhibition I am not at all worried as each of the 8 nominees is good enough to win. In fact if I were the sole judge I’d have to share the prize 7 ways (the 8th getting second prize….and, no, I’m not naming the artist whose work I don’t consider comes up to scratch.

This is an important exhibition because, not only does it showcase the bright and talented up and coming young things, it points to the new trends and issues that are being dealt with by a new generation of artists who, though very influenced by their no longer so young counterparts, are pushing new boundaries and tackling social issues in often more subtle ways.

Here’s a run down in the order I viewed the work—with apologies to any of the artists to whose work I have given an interpretation they haven’t intended.

Nguyen Xuan Hoang has a really good chair and book installation that perfectly offsets his long, landscape formats that appeal initially due to the wide monochromatic swathes that sweep across the canvasses. Each piece has a tale to tell and all demand attention. Dramatic!

The females/transvestites that inhabit the somewhat gothic interiors of Pham Tuan Tu’s very dramatic and appealing works are confronting. However, even more confronting are the images the viewer sees of him/her self in the portraits’ cunning mirror frames. Wonderful stuff!

Nguyen The Hung’s painted, colored and collaged works on Do paper are intriguing and worth a long investigation and meditation. I loved them.

A wall full of fashionista females that are seemingly morphing into manga trance zombies are almost too awful to contemplate as a societal reality. These almost overly decorated figures by Le Tran Anh Tuan make beautiful but scarey statements.

I thought that the Long Bien Bridge had been done to death in the past couple of years but Dao Anh Viet has re-invented the span and outshone all other bridge artists and photographers whose work I’ve seen. His long, thin panels are simply wonderful to behold. Joyful as well as thoughtful!

The smallish, seemingly quiet pastels on silk by Le Hoang Bich Phuong are initially enjoyable studies of placid beauty until you recognize the pain and hurt and torment inherent in them. Almost too good to be true.

The colorful motorbike journeys home by Luong Van Trung are full of wooshing movement and wonderful comment. If they are comments on journeys through an increasingly industrial and impersonal urban landscape, as they probably are, then they start to redefine that social comment genre. The central ‘hotspot’ canvas is quite sensational.

Nguyen Hong Phuong’s black and white texted and formularized and mathematically dizzying canvasses, some with a Cy Twomblyish border that perhaps hints at a desire for a space in life free of compressed conformity and MUST DO, are an impressive series.

The Talent Prize 2010 is initiated and sponsored by the incredibly innovative and wonderful GREAT DANE-ish Embassy who have done so much for our cultural life over the past six or so years

Thanks to artist Pham Huy Thong for the photos of the exhibition below.