Ilza Burchett – About The Exhibition “The Grapevine Selection II”

In an effort to present the best of the emerging new talent in the contemporary art of Vietnam, the exhibition “The Grapevine Selection II”, shows the work of six visual artists: Le Hoang Bich Phuong from HCMC, Truong The Linh from Quang Binh, Nguyen Dinh Hoang Viet from Hue, Lap Phuong from Hai Phong, Nguen Quynh Na from Vinh, and Trieu Minh Hai from Hanoi.

This year’s exhibition anticipates its visitors’ curiosity in the development of the contemporary visual art in Vietnam, by presenting the works of a younger generation of artists — most in their twenties — who are in the process of building the defining characteristics of their visual narratives as a specific mark of their personal artistic expressions.

The presentation of the works in this exhibition unfolds the viewing space at a glance.

But, of course, the quality of presentation only serves to enhance, to accentuate and refine our viewing experience of total immersion and participation in the encounter with a new work of art, with a new art production; until we are drawn to give it our full attention of that moment, turning even the seemingly disinterested and perhaps incidental event of visiting an art exhibition into a new emotional and intellectual life experience.

This exhibition — with its clarity of aesthetic purpose and emotional drive — aims to deliver a meaningful and memorable experience of the encounter between the viewer and each work on show, providing for a seamless emotional continuity of this interaction, yet allowing for a group of works, or a particular artist’s body of work, to be intelligible as a whole and at once.

Notably positioned in the immediate vicinity of the entry to the show is a porcelain installation work by Le Hoang Bich Phuong. It is exquisitely delicate in its fragility, charged to the brim with the disturbing emotional power of deformity, “…addressing the issues of unplanned development, and passions, and regrets in society.”[1]

Its sparklingly reflective whiteness is contrasted with the life-sized, darkly beautiful somatic paintings of vulnerable individualism by Truong The Linh, where he “…aims to express an individual life and its interaction with a society, in which prejudice is limiting people’s ego, individuality or uniqueness”[2].

The works of these two artists are correlated in their mood and find common thread in their thematic concerns with the series of extraordinarily detailed, almost hologram-like, hyperrealistically pained images by Nguyen Dinh Hoang Viet, who uses “… gentle colors and styles … to express the image of ruins and death.”[3]

The feelings of “Loneliness, cowering, and longing to share.” [4] are brought forward as a main expression of the artist’s inner self in the bravely painted close-up-self-portraits by Nguen Quynh Na,

and the flat minimalist aesthetic in the almost two-dimensional sculptural works by Lap Phuong is her way to convey and share her feeling of “…writing a personal diary by the language of sculpture.” [5],

while the large triptych by Trieu Minh Hai, titled “In-Restricted-Areas”, completes the exhibition’s overall critical contemplation of ‘the contemporary’, with his seemingly nonchalant resort to visually expressing fractals [4] and the perfect “…like a release from invisible grips.” [5] escape into metaphysics.

This is a beautiful exhibition, made of works that disclose the formation of a new poetic aspect in the contemporary sensibility of Vietnamese art, works that are no longer declarative and heavy on symbolism and allegory, but seeking an intimate emotional dialogue with its public, carried by today’s visual artists into tomorrow.
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Notes:[1] to [5] quoted from “The Grapevine Selection II” catalog, available at the exhibition venue.