KVT – Little Gems in Ngo Quyen

(Shortened Vietnamese version available)

KVT picks his favorites by the young sculptors

Sometimes when the Young Artists’ Club does exhibitions at 16 Ngo Quyen they are a mish mash…sometimes a little crowded and chaotic for the gallery space available. Usually you find one or two gems shining through and one particular year, way back, a beautifully curated show heralded the coming into the limelight of a few of today’s major young turks.

This year the sculptors in the club have organized a group showing and although it’s a little crowded it does allow you lots of space to wander amongst the plinths with almost enough room between to allow your eyes resting space.

With no one supervising the exhibition today one nosy female viewer was having a great time picking up some objects and spent a long time re-arranging a few smaller bits and pieces. When she came to the school of red fish swimming on the floor in a pool of just threshed rice grains and shattered mirrors I thought for a while that she was going to have them all schooling in an opposite direction but her fingers desisted just in the nick of time.

I picked out a selection of works that I wouldn’t mind having around me in the house or garden and decided that I’d really like Tran An’s light globe nestled, a little fraught, in a prickly architectural steel framework, as a feature in a corner or pedestaled in a ferny glade.

I liken it to a full moon imprisoned in a skeletoned construction site and would love to know its price.

Tran An also had  another bit that is really really very good. “The Scream” is a wonderful small piece in metal and extremely relevant to a lot of world scenarios and may even owe a little to Munch. It’s unsettling and attention grabbing.

Luong Duc Hung’s works would look right at home in several places in my home. My favorite is the smallest, called ‘Cover’. It’s thoroughly delightful and whimsical.

The same sculptor’s energetic ‘Inside’ and the very funny ‘Rich Helping the Poor’ are also worth seeing. They’re sort of ‘Henry Moore sends greetings to Vietnam’ in miniature.

As soon as I saw Pham Van Tuan’s wooden buffaloes on their ‘Journey’ I knew they reminded me of some lovely work by the same artist at the Sculpture Park outside the city of Hoa Binh. I assume that the lovely animals in Ngo Quyen were models for the large scale concept in Hoa Binh and I think they are just too nice for words.