HCMC – San Art Laboratory – Session One

Opening: Thu 18 Oct, 6 pm
Art Talk: Sat 20 Oct, 4 pm
Sàn Art

From Sàn Art:
Sàn Art presents ‘San Art Laboratory – Session One’ which will showcase 6 months of artwork production and experimentation by Tuấn Mami, Nguyễn Thị Thanh Mai and Trương Công Tùng, who have participated in Vietnam’s first home-grown ‘studio/residence’ program called ‘San Art Laboratory’.

This will be the inaugural exhibition associated with this initiative and San Art is excited to present the results. These three artists are the finalists from a nation-wide call for applications that were assessed by an Advisory Board composed of local and international expertise in the teaching and production of contemporary art.

Begun on 1st May 2012, ‘San Art Laboratory’ is a studio/residency program, initiated and managed by San Art, in Ho Chi Minh City. It aims to provide 3 Vietnamese artists (under 35) with studio and living space for 6 months each. An additional studio and apartment is dedicated to international residents. During each ‘lab session’ (residency period), participating Vietnamese artists must be willing to undertake regular writing and discussion about their work and ideas with a specific ‘talking partner’. Successful Vietnamese applicants are granted production money, a studio to make their art, separate living quarters and a small living allowance. Each lab session ends with a group exhibition at San Art showcasing realized work.

Tuấn Mami has immersed himself in the everyday city life of Saigon, carefully collecting a plethora of used objects that have been forgotten by this city’s residents. From dis-used cars to broken mobile phones, Tuấn Mami’s ‘index’ of these items suggests another kind of universe where material life gains new meaning. Nguyễn Thị Thanh Mai takes the invasive instruments of a gynecologist and has turned them into wondrous objects of fancy. Examining the ways in which man and science perceive the female body as both vessel of life and sexualized body, Mai questions her own relationship to flesh and beauty. Confronted by the density of image and language in daily life, Trương Công Tùng takes the readily consumed media of film, reducing its presence and meaning to what he considers their basic form – color, shadow and light. His resulting sculptures and video works illustrate this artist’s ongoing study of the meaning of time and space.

Tuấn Mami (b. 1982, Hanoi) has a BA in Art Pedagogy, Hanoi Fine Art University and currently lives and works in Hanoi. Nguyễn Thị Thanh Mai (b. 1983, Hue) is a graduate of Traditional Decoration, Applied Arts, Hue Fine Arts University and currently lives and works in Hue. Trương Công Tùng (b. 1986, Daklak) has a BA in Lacquer Painting, Ho Chi Minh City Fine Arts University and currently lives and works in Ho Chi Minh City.

For more information, please contact [email protected]