Exhibition “The Unshaped”
10 AM – 05 PM, Tues – Sun, 12 Apr – 10 May 2026
Indochine House
10 Lê Công Kiều, Sài Gòn ward, HCMC
From the organizer:
“The unshaped” presents 33 works on Giang paper, developed by Doan Xuan Tang over the past year. The artist returns to his familiar subject of the Northern highlands, yet situates it within a liminal space to allow for expansive exploration and ongoing experimentation.
The notions of “shaped” and “unshaped” in art are not merely formal distinctions, but articulate two approaches to reality, materiality, and aesthetic experience. Rather than opposing one another, they operate as intertwined tendencies within a single process of meaning-making. One seeks to define, condense, and clarify, the other loosens, disperses, and opens outward. The tension between them is not one of negation, but of generative force for art to emerge as a field of transformation, where unexpected forms are constantly being created, dissolved, and restructured in the perception of both the artist and the viewer.
Within this context, “The unshaped” unfolds as a contemplative drift by Doan Xuan Tang in dialogue with Giang paper – a traditional handcrafted material of the Hmong people. His engagement moves from hand-torn gestures to an embodied inhabitation of form, shifting vantage points from elevated views to grounded proximities, casting light upon the quiet textures of everyday life. This exhibition further evokes reflection on movement as an uncertain journey undertaken by the local people, nature, the artist, and the viewer alike, in search of a place to return to in an ever-changing world.
Đoàn Xuân Tặng (b. 1977) graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Painting from Vietnam University of Fine Arts in 2001 and currently lives in Hanoi.
His art is a steadfast dialogue with the life of Vietnamese northern highlands. Rather than merely conveying the consciousness of local communities amid constant change, Doan Xuan Tang approaches nature as a sentient entity – one that thinks, reflects, and carries its own quiet burdens. This introspective tendency is what distinguishes his artistic voice. He does not delineate mountain slopes, foliage, rain streaks, clouds, or the interwoven presence of people with descriptive clarity; instead, he builds meaning through interlaced brushstrokes, movements of light, and softened, dissolving contours. This is also the key to the mystery in his mountainous landscapes and inhabitants – an atmosphere that evokes the sense of transformation unfolding over time as something inevitable. Within these spaces, every element seems to breathe in a shared field of memory, where there is no noise and no drama, only a quiet depth and a gentle human tenderness.
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