KVT – Le Quy Tong………Before the Catalyst

KVT sits back, relaxes, and savors the pre-catalystic work of an adventurous artist

(Vietnamese version available – Đã có bản dịch tiếng Việt)

Over the past couple of years one of Vietnam’s most awe inspiring artists has decided to leave past glories behind and embark on a new visual art adventure.

Later this week I’ll write an opinion piece about Le Quy Tong’s new, mini solo exhibition, ‘Catalyst’ at the delightfully mini Dong Phong Gallery at 3 Ly Dao Thanh St, Hanoi, just across the street from the Press Club…It’s called ‘Catalyst’

BUT BEFORE I DO I WANT TO DO A MINI RETROSPECTIVE OF THE ART WORK THAT HAS MADE LE QUY TONG A FAIRLY FORMIDABLE NAME IN THE ART WORLD and also give those people who are inquisitive and perhaps new to Hanoi a taste of what was.

I used the term awe inspiring to describe Tong’s work because every time I was visually arrested in front of one of his canvasses that seemed to be dripping wet paint, I was invariably awe stricken…and who wasn’t when they came across his large canvasses at an exhibition a few years back when he was foot loose and fancy free and yet to be signed up by a major gallery

Obviously those large enigmatic heads were always going to be a huge draw card and you sort of can’t resist a gasp or two when you are face to face with one, or two…or even a phalanx of them.

Some of these works when auctioned have fetched in excess of $12 000 and are highlighted and aptly described here at a gallery in London faces.

It’s also difficult not to be impressed with Tong’s martially inspired canvasses with faceless troops marching on to indeterminate glory for an indeterminate country which put me in mind of Milan Kundera’s 1991 novel ‘Immortality’ in which a character, explaining the way of the world to his young daughter states that God created the world and then bequeathed it to a forsaken humanity trying to address him in an echoless void. Thus the inventor’s mankind project was abandoned and left ceaselessly running on a cosmic computer without anyone able to change any thing whatever. Man was aggressive by nature and condemned to wage war and technical progress would make war more and more terrible…..from the creator’s point of view mankind’s fate is only a play of permutations and combinations within a general program which is not a prophetic anticipation of the future but merely sets the limits of possibilities within which all power of decision has been left to chance.

And the artist’s weapons of war also grab me tightly near the pit of my stomach with their awesome sense of power and inevitable destruction in wars that are certainly more terrible and more often.

Now back to those gorgeously gestural faces and another bit from Kundera’s parental philosopher…. ‘the serial number of a human specimen is the face, that accidental and unrepeatable combination of features . It reflects neither character or soul, or what we call the self. The face is only the serial number of a specimen’

But above all of Le Quy Tong’s canvasses that grabbed so much attention in Vietnam and overseas were those of his bridges…Long Bien in structural, isolated glory and Chuong Duong with a sense the frantic and nicely described in this gallery blurb.

Le Quy Tong’s pre catalystic works were often grandly architectural with humans dwarfed by their surrounds

Structures in and out of Vietnam

And, of course, there were always the large machines that you felt were roaring past you so close that you felt like stuffing your fingers in your ears to escape the noise

Tong’s landscapes also pulled you into their depths

TOWARDS THE CATALYST:

Apparently since becoming independent of a particular gallery sponsorship Le Quy Tong has more sense of freedom to experiment with new art forms and directions

Here’s an example from last years Hanoi Grapevine Selection………

……and a couple from this year’s Affordable Art exhibition at Hanoi’s Dong Phong Gallery……

………which resonate in the very engaging Catalyst pieces on show right now at Dong Phong which I’ll write about as soon as I clear my mind of Bridges and other wonderful things that I’ve become too used to when the name Le Quy Tong echoes around my mind.