Exhibition “Under The Spell of The Lotus Country”

Exhibition: 21 – 26 May 2016
An Nam Parlour Cafe

From the organizer:

Artist Rasa Flay has been a world traveler since 2000 when she left her native Lithuania for the United States. The past four years Rasa has called Hanoi her home, where she has been studying lacquer painting in the studios of Le Kim My, Yuki Namba and Nguyen Huy Hoan. A symbiosis of natural and urban environments has always interested the artist, and living in Hanoi certainly provided plenty of inspiration to depict chaotically arranged, static shapes of the cityscape set against fluidity of the natural world, presented by the waters of Hanoi’s lakes, ponds and rivers.

A discovery of the Vietnamese lacquer painting was a highlight of Rasa’s artistic practice. Looking at her paintings, it is obvious that she completely fell in love with the process of creating lacquer work, when layers upon layers of lacquer colored with pigments or highlighted with inlay of eggshell, river, or sea shell magically reveal itself after the final sanding of the piece. A new, sometimes unexpected version of the initial idea appears within the painting, bringing an element of surprise to its creator and the viewer.