KVT – Some Random Thoughts about the Sofitel Metropole and Ha Manh Thang

(Photo © JuLie Vola) Click to enlarge

KVT glances up legendary stairs

I go to some exhibitions of really great art and occasionally to the studios of artists who are in the process of making what is to obviously going to become great art.

Thus it is with Hanoi-an artist Ha Manh Thang

The series he is working on at present is hugely magnificent but I’ll pass over that and go back to the series he exhibited at the Bui Gallery in April 2010.

“Not Memory’ is, in my opinion, one of the most important series of Vietnamese art works to have been painted. This pronouncement will raise some prominent hackles as the local critiques of the canvasses…both professional and amateur…tended to be tinged with a fair bit of hostility after the opening.

But mind you it was a year when the best of the best by Vietnamese artists had lots of barbed words thrust at them, not least of all the fabulously fabulous ‘Rain’ by Le Huy Hoang,

Pham Huy Thong’s provocative ‘Dong Bao’ series got a few bucket loads

And even Do Anh Tuan’s ‘I Wish’ series and Nguyen Van Phuc’s “My Name Is Happiness’ weren’t completely spared a few jagged cuts from the commentariat

In fact the only brilliant shows that seemed to escape completely unbruised were Nguyen Trinh Thi’s brilliant video piece