Exhibition: Waterscape

Opening: Mon 15 June 2020, 06 pm – 09 pm
Exhibition: 15 June – 30 June 2020
Blue Gallery
28 Tràng Tiền, Hoàn Kiếm, Hà Nội

From the organizer:

Are there any differences between eternal flowers of Van Gogh, Monet, Hokusai and ones of “Waterscape”? What are the differences between fresh flowers in gardens and ones which are cut off from branches, breached and sent into spaces, flickering like these feeble piles of silk ?

Nature is always the top interest of art and widely exploited by most artists as an aesthetic object, such as themes, or symbols. Landscapes, rivers, plants and flowers always become materials for artists to express their relationship with nature. But may this relationship also be a cover for other ones, when nature is at the risk of becoming artificial?

“If flowers can be drawn but the scent is hardly depicted” (Italian proverb), “Waterscape” mainly introduces floral images which seem barely relative to drawing flowers, but the focal points are landscapes in which they are put, although they occupy the major area of paintings. Perhaps due to that, the exhibition is not named by any kind of flowers but a landscape, and this one is also unusual, unlike anywhere else. Probably here, watching flowers is watching things outside them, behind them, like a search for scents spread into space.

And if art is originally a man-made product, these fragile flowers also seem like unnatural products of industries, tragedies, accidents, so as not to be reminiscent of blooming fields, of ink wash paintings’ beauty that has been pursued by art for ages.

Therefore, “Waterscape” is like a tireless search for questions, not used to answer concerns regarding the position of nature in present life. It is likely the most obvious difference so as not to make these artworks confuse with an art background that requires no scepticism or need to be questionable like the Vietnamese one.

Being a young artist, Quach Bac uses simple art media to tell his discreet meditations on the small world where he was born and raised, with an original and delicate visual language. His fuss-free/ silent artworks require a simple approach created by “the silence of music” as he once shared.

Quach Bac lives and works in Hanoi. This is his 3rd solo exhibition.

Written by Tran Trong Vu.