”Family Tree” Exhibition at Art Vietnam

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Opening: Fri 18 Feb, 6 – 8 pm
Exhibition: 18 Feb – 18 Mar 2011
Art Vietnam
7 Nguyen Khac Nhu, Hanoi

From Art Vietnam:
You are invited to the exhibition titled “Family Tree” by artist Tran Hoang Son at Art Vietnam.

In the family tree chapter, Son’s endeavor to depict life as an ancestral inheritance translates variously. A mother is portrayed surrounded by a halo of roses, a father is shown graced with the strength and dignity his profession confers upon him, a son   spreads his arms as if to embrace the world.  Each member of the family exudes the assurance and stability of a person who knows his or her place in life and moves through it with a solid dignity.  While not without its complications, this is a world of certainties, easily grasped.

The second chapter, by contrast, depicts a world of complexity and contradiction.  These portraits are of Son’s friends:  his fellow artist Le Quoc Viet, his teacher Phan Cam Thuong, the confidants with whom he shares his joys and his sorrows. These people are the “+” element in his family.  “When you put a ‘+’ in your family life, your own private ‘+’ makes your life unstable, puts more risk in your life,” Son says. “When you have a ‘+’ you will also have a ‘–.’  It is easy for this bond to be broken.” The rather transient and unstable nature of the “+” segment of life is what leads one to yearn to return to the place of origin, to a life of stability and peace.

Hence the final chapter in this body of work, depicting people living in their village, marks the culmination of a life journey. The ancestral family has been established and then broken, but only to be established again. The theme is life’s continuity.  To re-establish, one must go back to one’s ancestors, to one’s village, to the origin of the family tree. By this route one’s existence is confirmed. It is in this return to the source, Tran Hoang Son tells us with elegance, that peace and harmony resides.