KVT’s December Diary …16th… Landscapes ? Faces @ Dong Phong

Lacquer magic by Vu Duc Trung

Once again the intimate and super welcoming gallery DONG PHONG @ 3 Ly Dao Thanh has grabbed my total attention with another of the lacquer maestro’s exhibitions of extra special artworks. Click here for an overview of his superb show at the same gallery last year when his round pieces were reminiscent of delicate and mystical waterscapes or reflections in still ponds… as exampled below:

……and exampled from a work from 2012 which was in the more traditional rectangular shape

Vu Duc Trung’s lacquers have always invited the viewer, particularly me, to move beneath the surfaces and discover what lies beyond or beneath and in his latest exhibition of parallel works from 2012 to 2015 the artist allows visages to rise like lost memories.

Some are pronounced

…while others, my favorites, float mysteriously below waiting to be claimed

I guess because I come from a western culture, I too often tend to use references from my literary and art history education and an immediate one was Milais’ Death of Ophelia… the body of Shakespeare’s doomed, mad maiden skimmed by clear water

But then my imagination switches into local focus and pictures faces of Vietnamese wandering souls who drowned or were killed in war and their visages slowly appearing – ghost-like – through ripples or damp, mossy jungle floors… like here

… Or here…

It’s a very engaging small group of lacquer pieces at prices cheap enough to make you gasp

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

The piece below, from 1912, was the first to be snapped up by a canny buyer