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where we are now

Posted on 24/03/2009

Opening: Fri 27 Mar, 6pm
27 Mar-02 May 2009
Art Vietnam Gallery

“where we are now” portrays a country on the move, a country in great transition, paying homage to the past, living in the present and looking forward into the future. Each work is one isolated moment encountered on the path of change. It is a show that is as much about the ideas we have dreamt as it is about those which have been shattered.

Come celebrate life with an evening of art, wine, and jazz with Alan Hurst on piano and Jan Jung-Min Sunoo on Harmonica. If you’re now, you’ll be here.

10a 999 years after its foundation, with the unofficial population hovering somewhere around 6 million, Hanoi and its people are defined by numbers: the number of motorbikes a family owns, ISP addresses, pollution indexes, cell phone numbers, and monthly earnings. Hopes, desires, talent, and worth are all distilled down to simple math. Although, as with any community in momentous transition, the speed at which things move remains difficult to measure. To examine change on a macroscopic level is to witness a series of stills strung together. Over the course of time the quietude of these small moments stack, one on top of the other, to become something entirely different on the other side.

“where we are now” is an attempt to hang a series of these “stills”, by varying contemporary Hanoian artists, together in the same building. It is an exhibition by Hanoians for Hanoians and it comes one year before the official gaze of the city’s 1000 year anniversary begins. This show is not only an unabashed barometer of Hanoi without the pomp and circumstance surrounding the commemoration of 1000 years of history but it is also a celebration of life, as it exists, today, here, where we are now – 21 degrees north of the equator, 105 degrees east of the prime meridian, rapidly approaching a moment where Vietnamese art truly becomes part of global art vernacular.

When I began envisioning this exhibition I thought to showcase the work of nine of Art Vietnam’s artists. I wanted the number of participants to reflect the city’s age, its location in time, its precarious position on the edge of a new era. After mentally imagining what would hang in each room of the gallery I revisited the list of selected artists and I realized I had chosen ten artists instead of nine. Faced with the decision of cutting an artist or cutting ties to my initial idea of numeric relations I chose the latter. Each of the ten artists selected for this exhibition offers a unique perspective on what it means to be making work in Hanoi today. Through the assemblage of their visions a certain type of kaleidoscope is created. Press the viewing window to the eye and access the intricacies of flux, development, and celebration that run through the streets of this city.

“where we are now” navigates the space traversed inside all Hanoians during this extended period of transition – the distances that are impossible to measure. It is a celebration of life and art in Hanoi today. The work ranges from the playful, childlike fantasies of Dinh Cong Dat to the contemplative musings of our most senior artist Nguyen Cam. Maritta Nurmi’s series of tea tables, La Dolce Vita, punctuate the atmosphere with exuberant, unabashed color and Bradford Edwards’ Memory Boxes re-imagine the past through his appropriation of vintage Vietnamese pop images. Nguyen Thi Chau Giang and Dinh Thi Tham Poong’s work are feminine, personal narratives of the everyday interior life of women in Vietnam while the power and intensity of Ly Tran Quynh Giang’s woodcuts and her passionate oils portray yet another facet of female psyche. Subtle and freeing the Chinese ink paintings of Nguyen Bach Dan are a-typical investigations of the natural landscapes of Vietnam. Newcomer, Nguyen Van Phuc, uses self portraiture to probe questions of identity and raison d’etre. Finally, Peter Steinhauer, whose black and white photographs of Vietnam have captured the country during perhaps its greatest transition – from an ancient country to a series of modern metropolises – has also chosen to include images of Hong Kong and Bali alongside his Vietnamese work, hinting at the larger context in which “where we are now” exists.