KVT – SEED BANKS @ DONG PHONG

Thai Nhat Minh – preserving genetic diversity

Thai Nhat Minh has become one of the Hanoi art world’s most prolific, and successful exhibitors. He began the year with a few cheeky, randy Tet monkeys at Dong Phong Gallery and took this local art world (and art critic Ilza Burchett) by storm with a magnificent solo at the Art Museum and which you can revisit here

After catching up with the monkeys I put together a pictorial essay with appropriate links to some of his local and international sculptural standouts since 2013

In the five year since he put some curvaceous sculptures of seeds into a group exhibition by talented young artists, Thai Nhat Minh has experimented and exhibited with wood, stone, paper, glass, polished aluminum and plastic.

At Dong Phong he has returned to his fascination with seeds- sculpted in STONE

ALUMINUM

PLASTIC

and SILVER LEAF

Just two of Thai Nhat Minh’s wonderful seeds are alone. One on a pedestal and one mounted on acrylic

The others are in sets…., two free form groups of six

the rest mounted on acrylic in permutations of four, five, six, eight and ten

Some viewers may wonder why most of the seeds are so formally arranged. I understand that this has to do with Thai Nhat Minh’s fascination with the necessity to maintain precious seed banks so that species of rice-and other plant species- are not bred out of existence in the modern rush to tamper with gene pools.

I also understand that it is also to do with his fascination with the 3 000 year old rice grains that were germinated in Thanh Den in 2010

The various shapes of the seeds leads curious viewers along winding paths of conjecture that meander around the artist’s conceptual premise with old and/or extinct seeds. For those who are botanically minded and are aware of the millions of shapes of seeds occurring in nature, Thai Nhat Minh’s examples are simply wonderful replications of what is, or what may have been.

Sculpted seeds average about $300 per piece and I’m sure that the exemplary and accommodating people at Dong Phong, Hanoi’s most personable little gallery, can assist you in purchases of single, precious examples from Thai Nhat Minh’s other seed bank collections r works in progress