KVT – Lacquers of Vu Duc Trung at Mai

KVT gets carried away, again, by lacquer landscapes….or are they?

In 2007 a small, non commercial gallery in Ngo Van So decided to give young, emerging artist,Vu Duc Trung, his first solo exhibition and he hesitantly and apprehensively took his works to the gallery and laid them against the walls to experiment just where they’d look best when hung.

A Norwegian woman saw the pictures being carried in and decided she had to have one of the larger ones. Immediately!

‘How much?’ she asked in heavily accented English.

“Ask the artist’ said the gallery owner. We let the artists set their own prices.’

“How much?’ said the woman, confronting a bewildered Trung

‘Ah ah ah ah ah…$400’ he stuttered in heavily accented English…fixing on a sum that jumped into his head

“Done!’ she exclaimed, ‘but I need it now. My driver’s outside so don’t bother packing it.’ And with that she flourished a pile of dollar bills and exited the gallery.

Thus the prices were set and even before the works were gracing the walls a couple of other passers by had wandered in and snapped up one each, a gallerist had approached Trung to investigate representing him overseas and a reporter had decided to write a feature article about his work in an English language magazine.

So it was that Vu Duc Trung’s lacquers were unleashed on an approving public.

When Trung works with lacquer he always uses traditional lacquer and works in the painstaking traditional way but he has always pushed the medium towards an abstraction that, to many, is redolent of mysterious landscapes.

Over the years since 2007 Trung has had lacquer exhibitions featuring really interesting faces; exhibited works on paper; and proved that his skill in oils is excellent too

But it’s the ‘landscape’ lacquers that have continued to intrigue his fans and are once again an excellent focus in a large solo exhibition that is well worth catching….and if you are a potential buyer you’ll be pleased to know that his prices have not gone wild and woolly and are not inflated to heroic extremes.

Trung calls his exhibition ‘but is it landscape?’ and though some viewers will see beguiling abstraction, most will be drawn into landscapes that pull you softly into their  depths

Trung opened the show on Dec 12^th and as it was a date potent with portent decided to open at noon….12/12/12. This was a cunning trick and although it drew in a large audience of Vietnamese artists it didn’t get to the general art going public who, if they don’t see the exhibition, will have missed out on the best lacquer around the traps this year. His fans will be impressed and a lot virginal to his work will discover its mystery and magic.

Apart from a couple of large diptychs in landscape format,   the remainder are in large and smallish square or rectangular  format to address the query posed in the exhibition title.

As you wander the  long galleries you may  be tempted to breathe…Ah  a Turner….or a host of other famous landscapists you may be familiar with and love their use of and play with light.

Two round works are to definitely die for

I hope it a successful show….selling wise…because it certainly deserves to be. Perhaps some of you will join me as proud owners of a Vu Duc Trung lacquer work (though I must admit to snatching up more than one or two in Trung’s formative years.

And if you’re one of those people who only get along to openings  because of the crowds, or the food and wine, or just to be seen… but you missed this one, then this is one time that  you should get out and enjoy a lone ramble and a long look.

‘But is it LANDSCAPE?’ is on the THIRD FLOOR at MAI GALLERY until 26/12. The best entry is through the ART TALK CAFÉ at 12 QUAN SU…that way you’ll get to wander through a lot of other interesting young artists’ work before you see if you agree with me, or not, about the lacquers of VU DUC TRUNG