KVT With the Glitz and Glitter Set

A glittering show at the Viet Arts Center

The Viet Art Centre in Yet Kieu looks the sparkliest it’s been in a long time. The movable walls are in a new alignment, giving an illusion of more space and even the dusty floors have a sparkly and glistening hue as they reflecting the lights. The walls seem whiter But that illusion is probably due to what’s hanging on them….. large sparkly paintings by 28 year old artist, Tran Thi Huong.

Most of the paintings have figures and objects isolated in a field of smooth, pale grey and all have been finely decorated with sparkling glitter.

At first glance the works seem to self obsessed, narcissitic self portraits but when you start to wander you take in the nuances that add new dimensions. The artist belongs to the first Vietnamese age demographic that grew up in a burgeoning consumer conscious society. This rapidly brought them into line with most of the rest of the world that has long  been prey to all the wiles and marketing strategies that are sprayed like expensive and enticing perfume over us and successfully wraps and entraps just about all of us in a desire for glitter and gloss…. and more and more glitter and gloss…. Usually for the rest of our spending and throwaway lives.

A question  that immediately arises when I come across the work of a new female talent is whether or not she is making feminist statements. I always hope so because  the world wide sisterhood has a long way to go in its revolution for equality and particularly in up and coming places like Vietnam….but I always have to kick myself back into the realization that  statements of any kind do not make good art, only talent does that and Tran Thi Huong has plenty .

Her explorations of the self remind me a bit of those by similar aged, male artist Nguyen Van Phuc and one wonders if the pre-occupation with the self is symptomatic of a rise in a globalized world view identity that is pushing back the traditional and Confucian conformities that used to keep the cult of ‘ME’ in the background (well except, perhaps, in the lives of the rich, powerful, famous, and gangsta ).

Can any culture that whole heartedly adopts a high profile consumer life style be producing anything but successive generations of ‘me and me alone’?

But all this is idle, Sunday morning speculation over cups of coffee but which brings me back to Huong’s arresting paintings…all of which show good technical ability.

Huong seems to be exploring the lifestyle enticements that beset young, upwardly mobile young women and the dreams and nightmares that equally beset their consumer conformist psyches. In some the subject seems to be falling through space …as if in one of those dreams from which you wake in a lather of jitters just before you hit the bottom.

Sexuality and carnality flutter around on glittery butterfly wings (as they should) and sometimes blingingly blinds the subject to the inquisitive, even voyeuristic eyes of the viewer. An adventure into fetischism may be delightfully apparent.

My favorite work seems to portray the subject with hands over the eyes as if to say ‘where is my privacy? And the piece with the one eyed subject surrounded by goggling, starring, unblinking fish eyes could to be a statement of bewilderment and fear in the face of continual peer and fashionista scrutiny.

The modern young Asian woman is almost forced to be plugged into the demands and pressures of conforming consumerism and I guess they so often feel that their world is an implaccable, grey void…no matter how much glitter is attached to it.

Then come the demands of having to be an alluring sex kitten and the disillusion and tartiness of constantly being seen as fashionable accessory for the macho set.

So are they the paintings of a feminist?  I have to say a hopeful yes. Mind you I’m an ardent feminist and this affects my reading of the show and if the screed on the wall about the exhibition is a good translation, then that critic would say that I’m barking up the wrong tree

It’s a bright and glitzy show that would seemingly not be out of place if hung at a catwalk fashion show, in the fashion boutique section of a glittsy shopping mall….great ironic statements if they were.

They have a decorative feel without being too….kitschy in a satircal vein,  a bit Roy Lichensteiny pop art updated by 50 years, and fit into my terminology of advertising art and it this last quality that gives them a wide appeal to a younger viewing demographic.

You shudder to imagine the copyists who upon seeing Huong’s delicate and deft touch with glitter will attempt to duplicate.

It takes talent, a sense of  humor, and a post modern frame of mind to successfully take the mundane and tacky and,using  it in much the same way, turn it into attractive visual art that could have wide and critical appeal.

Well worth taking in, if even for the novelty factor, and on all week.