KVT – In the Midst of Chula Celebrating Ngo Van Sac

KVT revels in pyrography

People who like art work that will warm the cockles of their hearts at this time of the year when clear skies are making minimum temperatures plunge to near freezing for a couple of days, should head to Chula on the shores of West Lake. If the art work exhibited there don’t work their magic on you (as I predict they will) then the colors and designs of Diego and Laura are certain to.

Any artist who allows Chula to show their work has to be super confident that the colors and tones that are Chula don’t subsume their exhibits and the portraits by Ngo Van Sac have the élan that allows them to fit in beautifully.

Ngo Van Sac is a mid 30ish Hanoian artist and art lecturer who has found a unique and successful niche for himself amongst the legions of Vietnamese artists who are squabbling up the ladder of local and international recognition….and from here on I’m allowing my opinionista’s poetic licence run free so time frames and technique development a la this very talented man may be out of sync

He came to a lot of people’s attention in 2012 2when he won the prestigious Dogma Self Portrait Award with this pyrographic, multiple faced work

The artist apparently gradually came to this wood burning medium after adventures with other paint and wood engraving and mixed media

His fascination with wood burning and its possibilities led him from complex 2 dimensional works

To sculptural blocks that met with equal amounts of oohs and aahhs of popular and critical appreciation

Lots of artists hit on a formula that works and stick to it like ticks on a dog…and why not if it pays? But those with creative, enquiring minds keep on pushing and experimenting. As did NgoVan Sac with patterns and animals etc being included in his increasingly complex, yet even more appealing work

Then there is paint:

And collage:

And it all came together this year with a successful solo of mainly self portrait work at Craig Thomas Gallery in TPHCM from whence I borrowed a lot of the above images….see here for an excellent PR bit with images

A nice overview of Ngo Van Sac’s pyrographic techniques and explanations of where he’s coming from are here.
In an overview by Christine Nualart about the Craig Thomas IN THE MIDST OF LIFE show and saves me re-inventing the wood burning wheel as to Ngo Van Sac’s incredible technique….using a blow torch, sandpaper and natural ‘cockroach’lacquer

Now all the above is a bit of a digression from the really excellent show now on at Chula which is an extension of the Saigon solo and is called IN THE MIDST OF LIFE….volume two where you are met with a very good 3D installation on the platform that spreads across the pond

On the wall behind is one of my favorite works in the whole place

And another equally large and equally effective piece that deals with a couple of Hanoi’s methods of disseminating information

As does another hung next to one with a montage of faces. These images indicate how effectively some of Ngo Van Sac’s work coalesces with the decorated walls in Chula

As readers would have realized, in a lot of large works squares of wood have been mounted in a grid and the different grains used in elaborate ways

The images below indicate how well the artist plays with the natural wood grains while constructing his portraits

A corridor gallery with its plum or ochre colored walls that sets off the smaller portraits very dramatically indeed.

A series of small works that I read as being human faces morphing into animal avatars as in Hindu spirituality (or Greek or Roman for that matter) with the humans courting retribution by attempting to acquire divine attributes, could be seen to be the most commercially inclined of all works in the exhibition but are probably proving to be the most popular.

Perhaps because I’m an avid ocean swimmer whenever the chance crops up, I stayed for a long time with this one (plus detail) and which could be a pair for an earlier work below which is just about my all time favorite of Ngo Van Sac’s output with its journey into pure landscape in its lower field

If you want to escape the frenetic build up to Christmas or the full to the brim aftermath or want a New Year treat then a trip to see Ngo Van Sac’s enticing art work under the enticing Chula light shades is recommended

Or perhaps you may inveigle a trip to the artist’s workshop and see the work in progress