KVT – Art Amidst the Harleys at 11 – 13 Hang Bun

KVT gets revved up on good coffee and delightful art works

Mr Vinh Tan Dao must be a fascinating person.

He’s made his café at 11-13 Hang Bun into a permanent art installation, inside and outside, and from the images below readers can see that Mr Dao is an avid collector of vintage motorbikes

and because he’s the founder of the Harley Davidson Club in Hanoi, an avid collector of vehicles of that iconic brand

Then, too, he takes delight in collecting old fans, clocks, electric light fittings and other fascinating paraphernalia

as well as the occasional very vintage bicycle

Mr Dao’s coffee shop ‘CAFÉ XE co’ is almost too delightfully grungy for words and is a mecca for a continual stream of coffee sipping motor bike enthusiasts and also coffee connoisseurs who wouldn’t know a spark plug from a generator but who revel in that very more-ish grunge ambience

Mr Dao is extra special because he takes a special interest in Vietnamese art and artists and to thank him a group of really good and very collectable Vietnamese artists…Vuong Van Thao, Ly Hung Anh, Doan Xuan Tang, Luu Vu Long, Trinh Minh Tien, Do Hiep, and Dang Xuan Truong…have installed seriously delightful examples of their recent art practices on the café walls. They’ve called the exhibition ‘LOADING….please wait’.

If you’d asked me a couple of weeks ago about the probable visual success of this venture I’d have shaken my head in disbelief BUT IT WORKS A TREAT!

Anyone, like the hordes of westerners, who are into collecting Buddha’s would do themselves a real favor by seeing Vuong Van Thao’s small ‘fossil’ sculptures that are on effective display in unlikely café corners

From now on I’m not going attach artists’ names to works because in the context of the exhibition it seems irrelevant but I can assure you that most viewers and casual collectors will find something that tickles their fancy

An Australian viewer compared this fabulous war crowing cock to his cock proud Prime Minister who is more than anxious to show other militants his determination to blow a few Iraqi villages and their inhabitants to smithereens and to terrorize a few hundred thousand others…An American and a Brit coffee sipper argued that their leaders fitted into the frame too

And I also loved the other birds in the trilogy.

Here are some of the other works on the walls and I think that a lot of readers will agree that it is a grouping of artwork that makes you want to get along to CAFÉ XE CO, sip a specialized brew, and enjoy the atmosphere that is Mr Vinh Tan Dao’s very successful coffee shop.

and not forgetting this showering nude