KVT – The Southern Journals… Part Nine Ha Manh Thang @ Galerie Quynh

Has the locus of Vietnamese contemporary art shifted from Hanoi to HCMC?
KVT headed south to take a look for himself. The result is a series of articles about his encounters.

Read more articles here.

KVT explores landscapes and heaven

Ha Manh Thang’s latest exhibition was at both Quynh Galleries in TPHCM. It was an urban landscape series that the artist has been contemplating and working on since his  series ‘Not Memory’ was shown at the now defunct Bui Gallery in Hanoi in 2010. In this opinion piece I take a look at the works I saw in Saigon a week ago and some others in the same Landscape series that I’ve previously seen in Thang’s Hanoi studio.

In his urban landscapes Thang has concentrated on representing iconic buildings in three major cities: Hanoi in the north, TPHCM in the South, and Hue as the middleman…as it has been in various phases of Vietnam’s history.

In Hanoi, Thang’s icon is the Mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh, teased out, and as Phoebe Scott says in an essay about the series, ‘pared down almost to pure forms, and presented stripped of context, landscape human presence and even ornament…appearing to hover in unanchored space…as if the artist was seeking a critical distance from their iconic presence’

In my opinion, it may never have been more beautifully represented.

Some canvasses are presented within gridlines that disappear to somewhat intriguing vanishing points

Others almost appear to be phoenix in waiting to hatch out onto landscapes that may have existed previously.

While others sit heavily on a crush and tumble or are hemmed in by indecipherable mazes that brought to my febrile mind Shelley’s ‘Ozymandius’ that suggests the eventual, historical ephemerality of all man made structures.

This was also made more potent by one that is represented in phosphorescent paint that glows as a retinal image for a few seconds when the lights are turned off and darkness spills

Flitting throughout many of the paintings are images of ky lan, the unicorn-the most mysterious of Asian mythological animals and, I understand, an auspicious animal that brings luck, joy and longevity and also represents compassion, benevolence and righteousness. They were common features older Vietnamese buildings, both palatial and lowly and are a motif that recurs in much of the artist’s works. Perhaps they are phantoms that, patiently and optimistically, oversee the invention and reinvention of the country’s history.

The same treatment is carefully offered to a monumental building in Hue, on the outskirts of the Royal Citadel.

In usual Ha Manh Thang style, in all of the landscapes- and most of his other work, he uses acrylic in thin layers that create a blurred, dripping effect. The Quyhn Galerie PR suggests that in this series the transparent layers could be hinting that the physical may eventually disappear (which in the case Hue has been a partial reality twice in recent history).

In many canvasses charcoal has also been used as one of the mediums and this use hints at impermanence. One of the Hue citadel walls, executed entirely in charcoal, almost fade into obscurity….very ethereally

Where as the Hanoi and Hue landscapes represent recent historical regimes ( The Nguyen dynasty based in Hue,1802 to 1945, succeeded by the National Democratic Republic of Vietnam based in Hanoi) the TPHCM canvasses represent the icons and aspirations of an immediate, now’ generation.

The 68 floor Bitexco Tower, completed in 2010 is the dominant feature in the Saigon landscapes, all of which, in contrast to the others, are full of enormous energy and through which the tower thrusts its glittering sheath. In looking at the Tower, Thang deliberately chose aspects looking from across the river in District 4, but kept intact the architectural feel.

There may be an intention that the Saigon landscapes have a traditional lacquered look… a satirical and anachronistic touch. Scattered throughout are folk and ‘pop’ symbols that populated his “Not Memory’ series. The traditional and folk perhaps representing the difficulty of imposition or maintaining old concepts; the pop the infusion that deliberately or incidentally overlaps to make a new ideal or dictate culturally and spiritually acceptable to all.

One landscape brings into hazy focus Benh Thanh Market with the superimposed tower perhaps suggesting that the old should give up the ghost (and the valuable land they rest upon) and make way for the new

This takes me directly through the Galerie Quyhn doors where most of the canvasses seen above were installed.

There, Ha Manh Thang’s exhibition was titled ‘Heaven Is A Place’ and as with any title, the viewer takes the implied essences along with them when they view the work

The Hue canvasses fit the bill well as the monument, isolated as a landscape, is seen by most to be closely connected to the remains of the Imperial city which was planned to the strictest principles of geomancy and its auspicious position relates to three ky lan playing with a ball. Somehow it was intended to symbolize a layout of heaven transposed to earth. Thus when we see the words “This Is Heaven” superimposed on a canvas it seems to be a statement of historically manufactured fact

One canvass shows the words when they seem to be hesitant and scraped and scoured and seemingly drip blood. Perhaps representative of those two times when the citadel and its heavenly positioning was proven to be a figment of human imagination.

The irony in the exhibition’s title is all too obvious and relates to all cultures and histories and resonates with the text engraved on the sand blasted ruins of the immense monument erected to perpetuate the times and name of a very much forgotten Ozymandius…look on my works ye mighty and despair.

Another important body of work from a very important Vietnamese artist.