Exhibition: “Bottoms”

Opening: 05 June 2022, 10 am
Exhibition: 05 – 15 June 2022
BLUE gallery
No.32 Trang Tien Street, Hoan Kiem, Hanoi

From the organizer:

Human body: spirituality of forms.

While known for his unconventional sculptures, Vuong Van Thao (1969), a graduate of Hanoi Fine Arts University (1995), has also continuously been working on his do paper series that exploits the ability of this traditional Vietnamese medium to physically generate the effect of the real and of the imaginary.

These works created since 1998 have a human body as its focus and cultivate its capacity to convey ideas and attitudes. The paintings, some subtle and delicate, others direct and expressive, incorporate body parts, that remain taboo for the visual art scene in Vietnam.

Meanwhile for the artist, as he confesses, the transformed and exaggerated bodily components serve as a source for inspiration and as a tool to articulate his emotions and feelings ranging from love and ecstasy to despair and desolation. Accentuated in the composition of the painting, the body parts are interlaced with other figurative elements, which are largely features of Vietnamese traditional life: conical hats, ancient coins, baskets, etc. Sometimes the body part is hidden behind an object or an object adopts human shape hinting at the artist’s interpretation of the unit of material objects and material bodies as facets of spirituality and identity.

In some paintings, the bodies are tied with a rope, referring to the social problem of stiffness and dependence of human physicality on external circumstances. Other works capture the grotesque outlawed bodily parts in agitated movement suggesting not just the physical motion but also the flows of passion, sensuality and multidimensional spiritual move, the move Vuong Thao has been perfecting over the decades he has dedicated to this series.

Natalia Kraevskaia

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