Sculptor Dao Chau Hai: About Tran Van An’s Exhibition
The exhibition “Echo” by Vietnamese artist Tran Van An takes place from 9-15 April 2019 at the Vietnam Fine Arts Museum.
An exhibition introduction by sculptor Dao Chau Hai:
“The Vietnamese is well-known not only as good at using traditional materials such as wood, stone, pottery or terracota in their architectural language, creating sculpture, or decorative applications. Many millenia before, the art of making Vietnamese metal engraving has been historically recorded on the human culture map under the name: Dong Son Culture, which has brought pride to Vietnamese people, not only in Southeast Asia. The typical figures are drums, military weapons, armors, humanoid, animals and birds…, all vividly engraved with an art of high generalization, giving unique impact.
This is the debut solo sculpture exhibition by Tran van An, a very young sculptor.
Just like broken fragments remaining deep down in the cultural archaeological floor, the metal plates are cut into various pieces of different size, and then new surfaces are created by mould technique and heat welding. These bits and pieces are, thus, grafted together to create plane, block shapes according to a minimalistic geometry principle, as a jigsaw puzzle.
To acchive what he has got with his works displayed here, it seems that An has inspired himself from the whispers secretly guided by the owners of the original Dong Son Drums, who travelled here by boats and set their first footprint on this land in the beggining of the wild.
The abstract artist Wassily Kandinsky (1866- 1944) has refered to this type of art in his comment as follows “ There is another art… which also springs from contemporary feeling. Not only is it simultaneously its echo and mirror but it possesses also an awakening prophetic power which can have far reaching and profound effect…”
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“Echo” – Tran Van An: A dialogue with metal
