HCMC – Exhibition “Manequin’s Life” by Nguyen Khac Chinh

Opening: Tue 30 Jun 2015, 6 pm
Exhibition: 30 Jun – 09 Jul 2015
Artist talk: Sun 05 Jul 2015, 2 pm
HCMC Fine Arts Museum
97A Pho Duc Chinh, Dist 1, HCMC

From the organizer:

Solo exhibition “Cuộc Sống Của Ma-Nơ-Canh – Manequin’s Life” of Nguyen Khac Chinh – the second time – in showcase at the Ho Chi Minh Fine Art Museum, with 23 completed paintings in 5 years: from 2011 to 2015.

Read KVT’s review on the first “Manequin’s Life” exhibition at Vietnam Fine Arts Museum in Hanoi last year: “Cloned Faces at the Art Museum”

Nguyen Khac Chinh chose arts as a means to express his thoughts, feelings and reflections on life.
The series are a manifestation of personal narratives. If you look at them thoroughly enough, you will feel the artist’s ambition and desire expressed through the symbols that he wants to develop into some kind of styles. He is ambitious to embrace all of those universal faces out there in the life that he’s living in, especially those of the young generations. He paints what he feels by creating multiple unreal faces, all of them alike as empty shells with no sensitivity or emotions. Abstinence and control happen continuously on a figure or a group of figures depicted with skepticism, frustrating viewers in a hard to describe way. And it works!

On the other hand, there is a clear desire to get his message across and remind each viewer to stop and look back at their own life, to see whether they have been living it mostly with their true feelings and emotions or mostly like mannequins in this “plastic” era. This even opens up a broader message, that men are being ‘mannequin-ized’ and human qualities are being transformed in human technologies, which in turn are penetrating deeply into how behaviors towards traditions are evolving…

The series “Life of Mannequins” consists of several different topics (e.g. “Looking for the real face”, “Gossips”, “ “Working in office”…), but throughout the series, there is a consistent hidden underlying idea behind each painting: the state of being lonely in this modern life. Is it because of the human race towards wealth or fame that people have to be reactive in every moment in life and thus have to wear different faces? The Internet, Facebook, and other connection devices born as gifts of high technology, are in fact disconnecting people from other real human beings living right next to them. Everybody claims that no one understands him, but does he really understand himself? People are lonely in this very crowded life. Not with sarcasm or criticism, Chinh simply wants to reflect genuinely the nature of human psychology through his paintings.

Figures of girls in traditional outfits and with monotonic actions lure viewers into mysterious ancient spaces, but here and there signals of a modern life can still be found as the reminders of reality (e.g. an iPhone, a laptop, or a glass of wine). Do they co-exist, or conflict with each other? It’s not to be known. But if you look at the paintings long enough, you will see loneliness hidden from all those tiredness and anxiety. Loneliness emerges as a co-product of all those states of being. Chinh uses oil paint with hot and deep colors and smooth surfaces, together with some reasonable decorative details, which are typical strengths of silk painting. With his proficient technical skills, such intentional misuse of materials is in fact quite exciting and compelling, making this series unique.

Nguyen Khac Chinh’s paintings bring us back to ourselves and urge us to look into things deliberately and slowly and not to be distracted. Peace in mind will then come. Mannequins are fake human beings. Leave them and get back to who you are.

In short, this is a very unique, oriental series of painting, yet very modern and full of compassion.

(Vũ Lâm – Phạm Bình Chương)