KVT – Lolo and Shadow Play @ L’Espace

KVT finds that the latest art works by Lolo Lazar take him far behind the representative wall

Lolo Lazar has done it again Another exhibition of art work that is bound to be a hit with a lot of viewers for a variety of reasons.

Lolo put his name up in lights a couple of years ago with a photo print exhibition of Hanoi walls featuring the ubiquitous and dreaded jack hammer advertising stencils (dreaded if you live near a building that is being demolished). Then he literally lit up the night with some really fabulous lamps at Module Seven
His last Hanoi-an adventure was a duet early this year at Art Vietnam with some whimsical horoscope animals

Now he’s into real glossy photographic prints that shine like modern, quality ceramics – or perhaps more apt, lacquer-ware.

The works are not too large and all are enlarged portions of walls in the city.

I like the way Lolo looks at walls. I tend to do the same and though I can imagine what an effect could possibly be, it takes a master like Lolo to get the goods up and running.

This time at L’Espace Lolo has made his prints into suggestions of landscape and has included a shadow puppet type graphic to add inference and those viewers who like definite narrative structures will probably be totally entranced.

Most of the landscapes are ‘defaced’ using the photo ombre chinoise technique with motifs common to commercial tourist artifacts. This is typical Lolo irony and is the touch that lifts the prints way above the ordinary.

I really like the way that Lolo ensures that viewers of his work are asked to approach his work with a sense of humor, tongue in cheek.

The most poignant is the work that has the exhausted, or hungry, or ill, or depressed worker sitting dejectedly-a sight common in Hanoi…..but then perhaps the person is inebriated. It’s easy to make up excuses for lack of empathy

A digression from the irony is the very lovely sea-scape with fish surging through

Some people who like to make up their own narratives may prefer the prints au naturel and I’m sure that Lolo, the magician, will be able to magic up your favorite

It’s a show that has a distinctive Lazar touch and if I had kids I’d be taking them along too to add to their creative dream-times