KVT – Operating on Benign Tumors

I’m off on a tangent again! But when you come across some interesting and provoking art you just have to start dissecting even if you do cut and carve the intended meanings in all the wrong ways.

Six artists from the Annex group have a good looking and challenging exhibition at L’Espace called Benign Tumors….a catchy name, they say to make people curious, and obviously a title that may reference established and accepted societal problems. Problems that are causing no evident harm but the benign acceptance of which may be the latent cause of avoidable, even dangerous ‘cancers’. From what I can gather – by patching together my school-kid French and my Vietnamese which is at about the level of a pre-school-ager – there is a two-fold scenario. One is to present a satirical comment on what’s passing for comment art in the present Vietnamese art scene (which, like art scenes everywhere, regularly needs a punch and a kick in the vital organs to separate the creative artists from their onanistic colleagues). Two is to delve into societal issues in ways not already successfully tackled by other artists.
A real winner is Vu Duc Toan’s ‘Bot loc’ or ‘Rice Powder Cake’

This installation of air postage or par avion envelopes stiffened into a rigid curtain with a coating of rice powder batter could refer to the practice of offering money as gifts and the ubiquitous payment of bribes. (I see that 5 major hospitals in Hanoi have stated that they intend to ban the envelopes.) Toan says that the opaque envelopes are as clear as a rice powder cake…usually ambiguous. In the days before self-sealing envelopes, people used to seal gift envelopes with homemade rice powder glue and this is also a good reference point.

Another cake themed work is Nguyen Song’s sticky rice ‘Cake’.

The given recipe includes 30kg of sticky rice, 3 hammers, 6 scissors, 7 spanners, 9 pliers, 12 saws, assorted nails, paint brushes and on it goes. It’s a very funny art work, as disgusting as it is appealing and the most literal tumorous growth in the building. One could ascribe it many interpretations. It’s one of those dishes you’d like served up at a big dinner party when the small talk becomes too trite and banal and you are yearning for something more intellectual than facile.

Hoang Minh Duc’s old white trousers, coated from the knees down with grass seeds and framed behind glass

is titled ‘Dien da thang 10’ which I think, means ‘Collecting research data on field trips in October’. It is an elegant work that may refer to the prickly path a researcher has to wend through in the search for the truth. The use of October may be profound or personal.

Nguyen Huy An gives us a few amoebic like objects that invite you to lie down in them and relax….a bit like comfortable and inviting beanbags….until you realize that, like a lot of things in life, its all illusory and that they are just air bags…and probably all hot air! Sounds a lot like those promises that get thrown about and that have little substance under the rhetoric. It’s called ‘Wind’ and puffs itself up under the stairs.

Nguyen Duong Hai Dong has painted a TV test pattern following a detailed plan titled ‘Absurdity is My Inspiration’. It’s a lovely piece of geometric art and, for me, references constructivist theory and more importantly Russian Constructivism and then on to all of those schools of art that celebrated geometric minimalism . Do test patterns still exist? Is Dong also asking us to contemplate the absurd thing that TV is, or the absurdities that too often flow out of vacuous mouths like smelly effluent? Probably none of these! But, as I said, it’s a very eye-catching work and worth while exploring.

The dominant art work is the large rectangular pile of concrete industrial molds by Ngo Thanh Bac which I think is called ‘Balanced’. It’s subtitled ‘I’m Looking for my mind’ and one wonders if he’s inferring that his (or the nation’s, or the world’s) intellectual creativity is smothered by the demands of technological and industrial progress? I’m still cogitating about Bac’s work and if I kept on I’d have to write a page or two so I’ll desist.

Some viewers, and the Annex artists, may think that I’m on the right track or that I’m way out in the far reaches of outermost space with my readings of the works in the exhibition. Others will just be bewildered or perplexed with the exhibition and this text.

Whatever! It’s a thought provoking group of installations and definitely worth a trip or two to L’Espace (if only to peruse the gems of culture coming up in their auditorium).

There are book clubs popping up all over Hanoi like fungi in damp weather and there are one or two devoted to more esoteric things like poetry….but there doesn’t appear to be one that discusses and deconstructs Hanioan art. I don’t mean a group for so called experts but rather for ten or so amateur viewers who just want to enjoy and have their thought processes challenged. MORE INFO SOON IF ANYONE IS INTERESTED. If you are interested, please leave a comment below.