A Trio to See

I wish I’d gone to see the group exhibition by Ta Dinh Khiem, Ngo Hung Cuong and Dinh Quoc Vu at the Vietnam Museum of Fine Arts much earlier this week as it closes on Sunday and it’s really worthwhile viewing.

At the end of 2008 Khiem and Vu had a duo exhibition at Mai Gallery and I really liked their work then and went as far as to say that Vu was the painterly find of the year. In 2009 he surpasses himself. His sparse yet eloquent canvasses are gentle, figurative snapshots about the ordinary and everyday in ordinary and rural Vietnamese lives. They are lovingly rendered and are almost translucent with honesty. ‘Two Peoples Meal’ is a poignant example from a very strong grouping of his recent work. Eminently collectable and when I make up my best of 2009 list Vu will be a strong contender again.

The large canvasses by Khiem are, like last year, really arresting and I don’t know yet if I read them as light being swallowed by blackness or blackness being slowly conquered. Khiem use black lusciously and there’s almost a bituminous look on the paintings. A lot of people like the gridded or loose geometric abstractions that have color dominant but I fall deeply into the ones that are almost mysteriously concealed. The triptych was very good and my favorite is ‘Moonlight’ with its slash of yellow escaping horizontally across the canvas. I can’t help it but everytime I see Khiem’s black pieces the name Anselm Kieffer flicks into far recesses of my mind for a second or two and I enjoy that. It’s a bit like a slice of light purling through the brain’s black curtains.

Cuong’s abstract expressionistic canvasses are great fun and really energetic. His large fish pieces appeal to me and if I was be the architect of a modern Christian church or chapel I’d have no problem using two as focal points. I’d even consider ‘Fish Will 2’ as a commissioned stained glass feature. To me, Cuong’s smaller paintings are less appealing to me and perhaps could have been omitted. But then they are other viewer’s cups of tea (to mangle an entirely good metaphor in the midst of a very good exhibition from three talented, thirtyish, young men).