KVT’s December Diary …7th… Beguiled by the Mists of Ha Manh Thang @ L’Espace

FAR IN THE NORTH, ‘is where a blue-gray tint still remains, blending into twilight’ – Ha Manh Thang

It’s no secret that I’m one of Ha Manh Thang’s coterie of fans and so I made sure that I had oodles of time to wallow in his elegant mists and disappearing realities at L’Espace.

It takes a flair of curatorial excellence to make the difficult exhibition space at the newly rehabilitated L’Espace allow artworks to speak in proud voices. Ha Manh Thang has managed that feat with a non fussy installation of his paintings on paper and canvas. These are a selection from 2012 to 2015.

Ha Mang Thanh’s coat/robes based on those worn by the last imperial court in Hue are beautiful as they float in mists of evaporating time, their gilt and glitter gradually disappearing as do all the trappings and paraphernalia of dynasties and regimes as history and memory envelopes them****

Until all that remains is a phantom and illegible scribbling

Being a bit besotted with those imperial robes for a couple of years, it’s taken time for me to fall into the depths of the artist’s small lakes and ponds. Those bodies of water, so often surmounted by pagodas or dinhs or temples are ubiquitous throughout the plains and deltas and foothills of rural and urban North Vietnam

If you’ve followed the artist’s progress for the past few years you’ll have followed his journey into architecturally inscribed series of work. Now he’s allowing architectural icons – in this case the pagodas, etc… that proliferate around ponds and lakes – to begin to dissolve into the grey tint of twilight, of memory

Until they become color fields

And faint echoes against the drawing in of the light and the night

Exquisite works of art by a major artist!

**** my cup of imagination runneth over! Yet again!