KVT – En Plein Air in Van Mieu

KVT takes a breath of the great outdoors

There’s an unusual exhibition of paintings by five young artists at the Nguyen Art Gallery in Van Mieu. Unusual because it’s a showing of smallish landscapes and still lifes painted representationally. It’s a clever concept as the group have probably researched the present buyers market and may have come to a conclusion that work ostensibly done in  plein air, on fairly small canvasses with a few still lifes thrown in, may seduce the customer who wants the safe and known.

Not that its chocolate box or calendar type stuff and a lot is pretty nice work

The group describes itself as a collection of mobile artists who like to paint in oils en plain air…in the great outdoors and it’s the plein air landscapes that work much better, for me, than the still life vases of flowers.

Now I hope I’ll be corrected if I’m wrong about all of the following but here goes: If the group is truly painting on site without reference to photographs then they are following a hundred- plus a bit more- year old tradition that could only start when oil paints became fluid enough and portable enough to use without tedious mixing and preparing in studio situations. Just about all western countries have had their notable plein air groups or movements with the most famous being theBarbizons, and the Impressionists inFrance. Many artists still assiduously follow the style of painting that has to be done fairly quickly to capture the particular light of a particular time of day….sans reference to the dreaded photographic image.

It will be a popular show if the crowded opening is anything to go by and will suit those buyers who are after small, impressionistic pieces of art. There’s a some really nice bits on the walls (it’s also a nicely hung show with no overcrowding so that all of the pieces can breathe freely). The framing enhances the work and adds a classical touch to it…but not enough to make it twee.

If there’s been some appropriation of ideas from famous local and the old Gallics then that’s to be expected of pretty good young artists who are on the make.

Of all I liked the landscapes by Duy Hoa in the second floor gallery the most. Not all of them sang out loud but those that did are worth a second and third look

Dang Hiep’s landscapes on the ground floor are definitely worth a closer viewing too. Lots of lovely atmospheric feeling and perhaps you’ll recognize the one that can be glimpsed as you cross the Red River via the Long Bien Bridge…on the way to Gia Lam

Trinh Lien had two paintings that I enjoyed though I daresay a lot of viewers would have preferred an emotively colored couple that left me a trifle cold.

Le Thuy’s landscapes had a real plein air feel to them and I chose:

Duy Tung’s work had a lot of admirers and with some I really enjoyed that autumny  grey and misty mua xuan atmosphere that lay upon them (the paintings mostly but occasionally on the admirers who had wandered in from the cold, moist evening air)

Now this type of show isn’t usually my cup of tea, even a nice Earl Grey with lemon, but after a few sips of ‘The Colors of Nature’ I felt quite refreshed….perhaps it  was the audacity of it all…. and given exposure to the right audience, a lot of these works would sell like cupcakes at a school bazaar.

The Nguyen Gallery and The art Talk Café (which I featured in my last opinion piece) have all the physical possibilities of becoming major art spaces for interesting, even experimental Hanoian art. Wouldn’t it be exciting if they grabbed the bit between their teeth and ran with it!? Both have a choice of interior spaces that could be used in so many ways…my febrile mind salivates just by thinking about the menus they could provide. If only their curators had been at Tadioto’s art talk on Sunday night!

All images courtesy of the Nguyen Gallery