KVT at Pham Huy Thong’s exhibition at L’Espace

Pham Huy Thong’s exhibition at L’Espace is a real jewel.

Twenty eight year old Thong stands tall amidst that group of young artists who are actively questioning present social conditions. Some use savage satire, others have work punch drunk with parody, some have a humor as black as the eyes of a trilling devil, others a raised eyebrow and tongue in cheek approach . As soon as I saw Thong’s new work with its impish mud slinging at constructed conservative propriety, its teeth bared attack on relentless consumerism and exploitation of the poor, I knew he was coming of age in this artistic genre. With its laugh out loud, in your face but poking its tongue out at viewers with a possibly deserved hey is this you? dig in the ribs, my mind immediately cast it somewhere in the realm of the  tradition of the theatre of the absurd…because theatre it is

 Thong’s latest theatrical canvases – that have as their point of reference traditional Dong Ho prints – offer us a caricature of man’s grotesqueness, an image of the animal nature of man and his cruelty. They have a carnivalesque feel, full of buffoonery and wild humor and we get that sense of a world upside down. His canvases use some of the language of the absurdists to visually pummel an omnipresent consumer driven existence that is underpinned by complacent cruelty and man’s inhumanity to his fellows (and, of course, woman’s to hers).As an entrée Thong offers some of his slightly earlier works to give us a sense of where he’s come from and, in his marvelous Red Superman, where he was heading. Every viewer must surely be swept into giggles and even gales of laughter by the really absurd and wonderful Red River Divers’ Drawing Club.

Thong uses paint delectably. He’s one of the few artists around who have come to terms with the powerful use of text in paintings. I really like the corrugated back ground effect in some of the new pieces.

If I was Thong I would have canned the plastic chair installation because as enticing as it may be it can’t compare with his chair paintings that are always melting with deliciousness.

The most exciting thing about Thong is that he keeps on pushing at the sacred cow boundaries that contrive to hem us into controllable pods. If you’ve followed Thong’s progress over the past few years you’ll realize that as good as he is now there’s even better to come…if you were sensible you’d have started to collect his work a few years ago.

So if you’re an art aficionado and still abiding the summer strictures of Hanoi then I say do yourself a favor and amble down to L’Espace. The only thing that’ll disappoint you is that none of these canvases are for sale.

Gorgeous stuff.