Reminder: Exhibition “Letting Go”

Opening: Thu 03 Jul 2014, 6.30 pm
Exhibition: 03 – 09 Jul 2014
Vietnam Fine Arts Museum

From the organizer:

Don’t forget the exhibition “Letting Go” by artist Le Huu Hieu this Thursday.

His first solo exhibition contains 18 oil-on-canvas paintings in medium size; there are also different experimentations with acrylic, using gold and silver on canvas. It shows us the beauty in the patience for the passion of arts. With the language of surrealist art mixing with expressionist, the artist doesn’t just paint his own mental state but also expresses the consciousness of a certain class. This class is considered to be “The Youth of their times”. There is fear and amazement in front of the pressure of time and work. All the fallen angels with wild dreams combine with the temporality and wicked humor in the social stories where they are in.

Review “Hiding inside oneself” by Vũ Lâm

“For an ordinary human being born in anytime, there came a time when his or her awareness started to return back into the inner world. This has always caused chaos. The perception of human realm and the position of little importance in a certain realm that every creature appears as “blurry of the human image as one goes at night”. And the question is: So, what do we have to do, before “It and They”.

Facing the task of what one should do, it creates many different attitudes. But in general for most people there are only two ways: you either obey or you are against that. For the unusual especially the ones who are passionate about creating art, it has created a third kind of attitude. It’s neither for nor against, it’s neither staying nor leaving. This kind of attitude is so difficult to name, it hides inside oneself and once in a while it emerges in the body and mind. It has gradually grown and was written in interesting things mixing in the time killing nonsense. There is the truth and the absurdity in the rotation of mentality being materialized. It is the rising of a spiritual individual life trying to explain and digest life. It seems like this is where the art begins.

Born in 1982, in a land full of outstanding talents Nghi Xuan, Ha Tinh. It was also here nearby the land of old “ca tru” Co Dam, there are as many beautiful sightseeing as great people. Artist Le Huu Hieu has nurtured his passion for art since a very young age. He studied architecture, a branch of visual art and graduated from Civil Engineering University in 2006. Since then he has been working as a freelance architect with certain achievements in the field. But architecture, a branch of fine art that has more function and social serving, couldn’t occupy all his fine art creative passion. At the beginning, he painted mostly lotus or some landscape paintings which he painted for decoration or giving to some house owners (whose houses he designed). But that is still painting for “someone else”. The rest of the time or in the time of ups and downs, Hieu paints for himself. Painting for him is like finding a lifebuoy to touch the desire of absolute freedom. The artist shared his opinion on painting: “it was a distinctive realm where I can be my real self in this world and no one has the right to intervene.” The artist has found a way to hide within his self with the painting process when he still has to live in the human world and struggles with daily mundane contracts. Thus, fine arts has a new advantage for the painter is to free himself and as an antidote.

The artist said that when entering the fine art world he was so attracted to the surrealist style of Dalí and the almost surrealism of Buu Chi with such strong and dreamy color palatte. The orientation of being tired and bored with reality plays an element in bringing the sweet way for a human being to escape inside his mind to surreal illusory. The artist does not hesitate to use again certain motif of the old master Salvador Dalí in his own works: the giraffes, the soft clock…etc. Perhaps Hieu is not an escaper in nature. The uncontrolled background palette and repeated expressive motif has appeared more frequently than the symbolic nature. It can be said that for artists having stand in front of the long road of art there are millions of attractive invitations to the body language. And past symbols have brought an interesting fortune for them to choose.

For his first and exciting solo show, we can roughly divide Hieu’s works in two main themes. One theme is “self portrait and one’s spiritual space” (even though he didn’t name any works self-portraits) with the Letting go series (8 pieces) with works such as: Being on one’s own, Exposure, Rain, The Pressure…etc. The audience can immediately see the innocence in what he wants to say. The artist painted different states of him like animals without bones, like a painted skin or a scarecrow with the lazy and confused eyes, which owns a fate but not enough dramatizations. We can feel the humorous self-poking even though the forms in the paintings look emaciated.

The second theme is his thoughts on social issues with pieces: United, The Last Festival, The Last Battle, and The Thinking Region… In this series of mostly self-reflection and a look of humor, we can see a young and strong human being who doesn’t hesitate or being bewildered when facing with reality. If in the Letting go series, I myself personally enjoy piece no 8 in the later series I like The Last Festival the most. In this piece there is figures like human drawing on caves. Being human but sometimes we can be all confused on our own with time and doors. There were times when the whole crowd makes a fuss out of nothing in front of those doors and time!

There are some comments that it seems like those youngsters having been enlightened earlier than usually. Because the air they breathe might be lack of true value or the goods they consume everyday are too fake. We cannot differentiate between the good, the bad, the ugly, and the fake anymore. They don’t know how to behave to be right anymore. “The human being living in life who hasn’t satisfied with himself.

Early morning he would let his hair down and take a small boat to roam.”
Be it like the old days, one could go away to hide himself. But now in this flat world no matter where he goes there’s also someone finds out or can be exploited as “adventure tourism”. The best solution might be: Hiding inside one’s self.”

Translated by Đỗ Tường Linh

For more information about the exhibition, you can visit Hanoi Grapevine’s previous post.