KVT – Sculptured Houses Cubed

A chilly weekend was a good time to visit the Art Museum and see what happens when nine sculptors show the end result of a three month co-operation project. Initially I wandered in without bothering to know anything about the creative aim of the residency cum collaboration and enjoyed the exhibition. Then when I discerned the limitations set the sculptors I meandered it again with more judgmental eyes.

On the front lawn are 9 interesting individual sculptural works that make up 9 cubes. As these are un-named I found it best to visit the artists’ bits inside the museum and then match those with the outdoor cubes. Sometimes too easy! Occasionally an intriguing puzzle!

Overall it’s a successful exhibition. To install 9, often large, disparate works in close proximity to each other is often a recipe for viewing disaster but these find just enough room to breathe without being too overwhelmed, even though the squeeze makes you hold your tummy in. Double the space would have been perfect.

Many of the six Vietnamese sculptors involved appear to have worked with concepts they’ve been evolving for a fair while and constant viewers will recognize their style.

I was immediately drawn to ‘A Perfect Start’ by Tran Trong Tri. I guess its 100 interior-illuminated, red eggs represent those laid by Au Co in the Vietnamese creation myth. Nestled in their individual perspex boxes on a steel table they look like a display in an up-market boutique. Could be a great comment on the birth of the burgeoning consumer demographic. It’s worth a gallery all to itself.

A lot of the sculptures on display have a lovely interaction with substance and shadow and with this in mind you see that Le Lang Luong’s wall shapes have an almost gothic novel feel to them. They even seem to be morphing as you look. Some of this artist’s best stuff yet.

Belgium based Paty Sonville has installed several steel silhouettes that outline names and numbers. The large screen is a winner and the stool is a delight. Her work has a functional quality and I’d love to commission her to do some window screens for our proposed new house.

Another artiste Belgique, Talbaui Fatima, has also used steel to create see-through shapes and her suspended amorphic piece with its counterpointed reed mat is really engaging and begs interpretation. I wouldn’t mind owning her wall mounted ‘Etoile Naisance’ (new house again!) Her lawn piece is good too.

Khong Do Tuyen presents two of his wood sculptures bound in thick strands of copper wire. Named ‘Trace’ I and II they provide a centered exclamation mark in each gallery space. For me, his work seems to bridge a chasm between ethnic wooden sculptures from parts of the Central Highlands and the Kinh appropriation of them…..mind you, that could be wishful conjecture on my part. Le Thi Hien has really stuck to the project’s proforma of a house in the shape of a cube in her two displayed works. Using her trademark cerise pink, steel triangles are joined in two interconnecting parts waiting to be made whole. The negative space between is electric with tension. I’ve been a fan of her stuff for a long time and I still haven’t come to terms whether it’s that delicious color or the hard edge geometry.

American Bart Uchida has installed what I consider to be the high point of the show. His ‘Uplifted Landscape’ made of rice, plastic wrap, twigs, live green reeds, rice and a broken cement bowl, is full of untold stories and conjectures. I’d love to see what else he’d come up with. It almost belongs in the Museum of Ethnology.

Another intriguing piece marries the natural with the manufactured in an uneasy but quite powerful look at how progress impacts on tradition. A polished steel block is suspended as pendulum or battering ram. Titled ‘The House,’ it’s good stuff, and, like the previous landscape, needs lots more personal space. Unfortunately the positive and negative concertina stairs by Mai Thu Van were in the process of unraveling but the red staired cube on the lawn was pretty effective and fulfilled the project’s requirements of ‘a house in a cube’ very architecturally.

The exhibition is on until the 31st and it’s proving quite popular with Vietnamese viewers. I consider it well worth a visit. With The Viet Art Center continuing their 3-part sculptural exhibition this week, Sculpture has become the Hanoi flavor of the month. About time too!