KVT – Mirrored Adventures

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Phase 2 of the 3 part sculpture exhibition at The Viet Art Center is phenomenal….well I think it is!

Sometimes you enter an installation and you have an immediate visceral connection with it. For me, one of those times in Hanoi was way back when I came across Doan Hoang Kien’s red and white bamboo poles at the Viet Art Center. The same thing grabbed at me every time I saw the installations whenever Dao Anh Khanh had one of his extravaganzas out by the Duong River….and today I immediately engaged on the visceral level with Van Ngoc’s bits and pieces installation that spread right throughout the spacious gallery in Yet Kieu (must be something to do with my architectural bent).

Van Ngoc, a conceptual sculptor, from Vung Tau by way of Phu Tho, has given us a site specific installation work that has a randomly planned (how’s that for an oxymoron?) architectural look to it that extends into and onto all sorts of directions and planes via mirrors that are placed throughout. Materials used seem to be all randomly found but you realize that there is method in the madness.

Some viewers may think that all of this is a wandering scrap lady’s heaven….and so would she! And she’d soon have her friends in and have it dismantled and off to the recyclers in no time at all. But those, like me, who cut their conceptual appreciation eye teeth on Louise Bourgeois, and then the wonderful Jessica Stockholder, know just how exciting it is to wander through and into Van Ngoc’s open and closed boxes and rectangles.

When the intellect takes over I start to weave ideas and stories into the constructions and wonder just what I may see if I was able to discern the contents inside the closed boxes or what mini environments may be seen through the various peepholes in others. It’s all a bit like a huge and cerebral cubby house construction that is populated with cast off memories, dispossessed stories, Alice Through the Looking Glass possibilities, and very definite adventures.

It’s always a shock -or a narcissistic pleasure- to suddenly be captured in one of the mirrors and to realize that you’ve become an integral part of the installation.

STOP PRESS….just now, a Vietnamese friend leaned over my shoulder as I was looking at some images of the exhibition and exclaimed, ‘Hey, that looks like a coffin used in the old times!’ That insight could add a new dimension to my stream of conscious meanderings so I’ve decided to stay in the visceral and enjoy!

You have to be a good artist to make this type of art work well and Van Ngoc has pulled it off beautifully and you can catch it till and on the 25th.

The 2011 visual art scene is developing a wow factor!

PS: Is it a thematic device or not? But whatever, Dao Chau Hai’s extremely arresting layered glass anvil/ buffalo from Phase 1 of this exhibition series is incorporated….and catch the bit of timber hanging on the wall to its side…a good minimalist artwork in itself.