KVT – Reflections in Black on Black

KVT ponders a profound painting

On January 15, I saw an extremely powerful, large oil painting by youngish artist, Tran Chi Thanh. The image has been rolling around in my mind ever since, right through Tet, awaiting a suitable response; a response more intellectual than emotive. Eventually I’ll get my words into the right order but until I do, these interim observations will suffice.

A lot, like me, viewing the work, will be filled with a sense of outrage tinged with sadness that this painting represents the untimely demise of the last Javanese rhinocerous that wandered wild and lonely in Vietnamese forests. It was poached towards the end of last year.

Others might be consumed with that bloodlust common to safari hunters who wish they were there at the kill and wanting, at the least, a photo of themselves posed near the carcass, rifle by their side like a blood primed phallus.

Still others, primed with too much money, will salivate at the thought of treating a few of their envious mates to a rhino stew or a thick cut of rhino steak at one of those illegal, but officially tolerated, restaurants that extol the virtues of eating exotic species of poached fish, fowl and game….the rarer the better!

Then there may be a few extremely wealthy but impotent alpha males who’ll be on their mobiles in a flash to find out where they can get a few grams of powdered rhino horn to snort or down with a smooth, 100 year old single malt when, sensibly, they’d be better off wandering into a convenient Nha Thuoc and grabbing a few tablets of viagra or cialis.

Back to the painting!

It has a celestial quality. The slaughtered animal, shorn of its horn, a ragged bullet hole punctuating the skull, floats in a night sky. A blood smeared moon bears it company.

A frayed, woven bamboo mat, stamped with the symbol for happiness, is spread over the body. Covering a human corpse under a mat like this used to be common in Vietnam and is still seen after a death in public (road accidents etc) when a readily available mat keeps the body safe from prying eyes. Recently I saw an old man who’d collapsed and died from a heart attack in a busy street being thus covered until he could be suitably removed.

The bowl that metaphores as the moon could be collecting drops of blood as a libation to the gods….in this case a futile sacrifice (though those viewers gastronomically inclined may see it as a receptacle collecting the spilt blood so that it can be poured into serving bowls to gell, then garnished and relished as a delicious starter to a rhino feast).

It’s a dramatic painting and when it was unveiled to an audience after an equally dramatic, short documentary film about the artist, you couldn’t help but gasp.

On Sunday, 15 Jan, the blurb for the event in the back space at the Cinematheque read:

‘This time we feature Tran Chi Thanh, a the young artist who escapes the culturally restrictive environment where he grew up and flees to the city only to find that here he is even more crushed. He feels like a wild animal killed by civilization. Thus he paints vast canvasses of dead wild animals as if to resurrect them and free them as he frees himself.”

As the documentary unfolded you saw abstract glimpses of the rhino being painted in gestural sweeps. As well there were tantalizing glimpses of portions of other canvasses of endangered, similarly sacrificed animals that Thanh has painted and I wished that I could see an exhibition of all these major works.

The film about Thanh is part of Project Black, a year long project that is making short documentary films about interesting Vietnamese artists; artists who are ‘exploring the edge and who have generally remained outside the established scene’. It bears the logo of Fon Ya Gallery in Taiwan and young film maker, Wei, shows an innovative talent.

Project Black is proving to be one of the exciting art events in 2011/2012. I caught the first and last showings at the tag ends of a two-month overseas excursion, and both really stimulated my nerve endings. As yet I’ve still to investigate the ins and outs of the venture but that’s on my agenda.

Each event begins with a shortish piece of performance art or experimental dance that tends to allienate some in the audience who are virginal to the genre but both I’ve seen have been worthwhile…..the first was really engrossing and the last, a promising piece on the relevant theme of global warming, co-ordinated by Pham Van Truong, could be quite forceful given a bit of a thoughtful polish.

Both of Wei’s documentaries that I’ve caught have been effectively raw and pulse along with a soundtrack that energises as well as grates but eventually they come together as a purposeful whole that determines to sit, squirming, in your memory.

In some ways the events at the Cinematheque have a Dada-ish feel to them, and in today’s art scene which is a teeny bit tinged with a taste of timidity, that’s a good thing.

Though seemingly popular with a coterie of local Vietnamese artists, Project Black hasn’t got the strong following it deserves but as it progresses I hope that it garners a cult atmosphere and really catches on.