KVT – Once Upon a Wish

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Once Upon a Wish

Do Anh Tuan has an exhibition that should be on your must see list. It’s at the Fine Arts Museum. He’s in the top rung of the young turks * of the Vietnamese art scene who allowed the wind of social comment to lift their artistic wings and soared high. As these select few men and women get into their third decade and take on societal responsibilities like parenthood and/or mortgage and start to gather a few imperceptible frown lines one wonders if their passion mellows out a bit.

On, then, to my impressions of the exhibition with apologies to Tuan for my ‘old turk’ * reading of it all.

Tuan has definitely moved on. And many viewers will be somewhat moved when they are confronted with his large and richly luscious toddler canvasses that have the little emperors/empresses reigning confident and monopolizingly supreme in the middle of their universes. These universes are propped up by minute figures from previous generations whose efforts have made possible a future where material rewards and enticements float around like butterflies waiting to be torn from the sky by greedy little fingers and have their jeweled wings plucked off.

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One realizes that these toddlers haven’t been scarred by any realizations that the bubble they rule over may be flawed with poverty or inequalities or potential abuse and it’s the fragile innocence that adds a tension to the gallery that’s full of their adorable chubbiness.

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But enough of my personal readings of these glossy canvasses with their caricature like figures and shiny objects that look as if they could be stickers taken from a kid’s activity book and impishly stuck on. All of the works are loaded with symbols, symbolism and allegory and it’s a delicious game to read your way through each one. Probably even more delicious if you make it a game with a companion who has a sparkling wit and again with another who has an overview and understanding of east Asian art history.

It’s quite a jolt to leave the luxurious oils that shimmer and glow and see the canvasses in the next gallery. Here, acrylic paint has been used, sometimes with a paucity that reflects the austerity of past decades and the austere lives of the subjects this time not the dominating little royals but diminutive, monochromatic, anonymous peasants that have a great pathos about them. Each peasant inhabits his own dribbled and spattered universe of travail that blurs monochromatic day into the deep, dark nights of scattered dreams or exhaustion.

Each character seems to be intent on accumulating wealth , or at least wishful wealth, that will allow their offspring a better, more material lifestyle.

Once again the canvasses are rich in symbolism and historical allegory, sometimes subtle and sometimes obvious enough to give you a black eye. The very good Homeland canvasses where the known world wanders about on a peasant’s fragile hat instead of on the back of a sturdy turtle are in the latter category and perhaps are spelling the end of the peasant as the noble figure in the Vietnamese psyche.

One device I found intriguing was the way in which some of the paintings were a bit like the tableaux presented in Vietnamese and Chinese bonsai landscapes wherein ceramic figurines inhabit peaceful glades. In Tuan’s beautifully contrived universes the figures were often ironic, satirical or paradoxical.

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As I looked at them and somehow it’s these that I like most. I was reminded of the last days of the recent 1000 year celebrations when country folk crowded into the city center for the festivities. I asked a lot of upwardly mobile young adults if they were actively participating and a majority answered that they were preferring to watch it all on TV because there were too many peasants around to make it comfortable.

If you want to know more of the artist’s intent or read brilliant, fellow artist, Ha Manh Thang’s insightful comments, then these are available on the wall or in exhibition catalogues. I always prefer to leave other peoples’ interpretations and expert comments until much later, until after I’ve reveled in my own conclusions and emotional responses.

As with Tuan’s last exhibition (link this to his earlier show in Studio Tho), which I raved about and named as one of that year’s top shows, this one is also tops but be quick! It closes on Saturday.

* young turk: young person who is rebellious and difficult to control in a company, team or organisation.
*old turk: aging reprobate who should know better and who is mostly impossible to control.