Exhibition “Life of TET”
Opening: Sat 07 Feb 2015, 6 pm
Exhibition: 07 Feb – 07 Mar 2015
Art Vietnam Gallery
From Art Vietnam Gallery:
Tet, the annual celebration of the beginning of the lunar New Year fills the city of Hanoi with a joyful anticipation of new beginnings, a renewal with the promise of new hopes and dreams.
It is celebrated in a myriad of ways from the traditional making of Dong Ho woodblock prints to hang on ones door, preparing TET Banh chung cake, cleaning and refreshing of the house for entering the new year clothed in new fashion in which to celebrate in style.
Altars are cleaned and adorned with all kinds of special offerings, five fruits in a glorious display of color, persimmon colored mounds of sticky rice, lovely vegetables and soups all topped off with a boiled chicken bearing a rose in its mouth.
Visiting friends, family and ancestral grave sites play a big part in this rich celebration of honoring the past and celebrating the present with its promise of what is to come.
Art Vietnam Gallery is pleased to be celebrating this New Year of the Goat 2015 with a playful exhibition of two eclectic Hanoian artists, Nguyen Quang Thang and Lolo Zazar.
Thang will present the 12 year cycle of animals that make up the zodiac, the diagram of one’s destiny, expressed in Nom, a Sino-Vietnamese language that was widely used between the 15th and 19th centuries by Vietnam’s cultured elite. In the early 1900’s the Latin based Vietnamese replaced Nom with the resulting effect that today only a small number of scholars are able to read and write in this historic text.
While Nom characters are still used for decorative, historic and ceremonial value as well as symbols of good luck, Nom is rarely studied these days. The Institute of Han Nom Studies and scholars such as Thang are trying to revive this old language.
Thang is one of the members of Zenei, the new Gang of Five, a group of avante garde calligraphers and Nom scholars started by Art Vietnam’s well known artist and Buddhist scholar Le Quoc Viet. These five artists are to be celebrated and recognized for using Nom in performance, calligraphy and abstract painting making the language come alive in a modern context.
A Hoang Phi (horizontal frieze) of the 5 tastes of life and two cau doi (columns of parallel sentences) comprised again of the twelve animals of the zodiac complete Thang’s depiction of the life of TET
As Thang honors tradition by creating his Nom script zodiac, artist Lolo Zazar presents a more modern depiction of the zodiac with his playful photo montage sculpted animals full of whimsy and life reflecting the modern day life in Vietnam.
Lolo Zazar, an artist and animation film maker from France that settled in Vietnam years ago, sees this world of Tet and the zodiac through childlike eyes, full of wonder and excitement over the simple joys of life and its encounters.
Over the years Lolo has taken photos of the life in Vietnam as if seen through the eyes of
an innocent, reveling in all manner of ordinary pleasures. For the last seven years he has photographed the walls of Hanoi with their graffiti and graphic numbers that project day to day life. The artist has taken these photos and assembled them into magical 3D creatures that seem to dance with mirth and gaiety. Each sculpted animal’s shape reveals its intrinsic character, accentuated with witty and playful photos.
This freedom of abandon exuded by all these magical creatures fills the viewer with a hopeful anticipation of indeed a new year of promise in the New Year of the Goat.
Please come to join us in this joyful celebration of the Life of TET 2015. Chuc Mung Nam Moi!
| | Art Vietnam Gallery 24 Ly Quoc Su (2nd Floor), Hanoi Open Monday-Saturday 10am – 6pm Tel: +84-4-3928 5190 Email: [email protected] Website: www.artvietnamgallery.com |
