KVT – Solo Exhibition of Phan Phuong Dong

The Delicate Lightness of Being

I really like the physicality of the Au Co Gallery. I’d love to own it, ramp it up and utilize all its interior and exterior spaces. I love the situation of the gallery in its slice of suburbia with its winding alleys, not far from a large wet market, and with the reaches of the Red River just down the road.
The long, back space seems to be one of the few in Hanoi suited to video art installations and it has a drama to it that excites me.

I almost missed out on sculptor Phan Phuong Dong’s solo exhibition ‘Light’ and because it closed on the 27th so will anyone else who hasn’t been keeping up with the ins and outs of the art scene during December.

It’s a light industrial exhibition that uses aluminum and steel in a series of installations that spread through most of the available gallery spaces and that segue into a pleasant whole. It’s almost a maquette or a rehearsal for a much larger, outdoor exhibition in polished steel and chrome where its rhythmic curves and forests of lines and its reflective plates could play in the sun in all its seasons and where its shadows could glide and slide.

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I particularly liked the negative prints on the walls in back gallery and the functional sculptural barrier running down the middle. It’s a really dramatic installation in a dramatic space. The big geometric print on steel that leads you into this space is also a nice statement.

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I’m glad I got to see the exhibition. Its airiness was a good antidote to the rush and bustle leading into the silly season.