KVT – bài đầu tiên của năm 2009
A Black and White Affair
What a good way to be welcomed back to wintry Hanoi. I step off the plane and am taken to the Green Palm Gallery in Trang Tien to see Tran Nhat Thang’s exhibition “Portraits of Freedom“.
It’s a theatrical experience wandering through the gallery, a drama in black and white. In one room you are overshadowed by the large, sometimes huge, black and white canvases that stretch and reach around and above you. At times it’s a relief on the eyes when there’s an occasional softening of the monochromatic palette with warm browns and a few effective, if decorative, splashes of red.
The paintings are almost caligraphic and with the approach of Tet, if you saw them outside the exhibition you may be tempted to look for Confucian meanings. If you approach them as being influenced by western art you would reference the effect of Chinese brush painting on western artists from Picasso to the present. In some ways, to me, many are almost American expressionist abstract artist Joan Mitchell’s without color. They’re the sort of paintings you could live with, almost meditative.
The publicity blurb and (badly) translated prologue puts them in the minimalist school, but I think they are generally too busy to be considered …though in a minimalist designed room some would fit rather well. I’d like to see one or two of the tall triptychs or the expansive, non-stretched canvases on the stark walls of a modern, minimalist foyer of a well designed city building (where oh where in Hanoi?)
It’s an interesting body of work to kick off the solar New Year and I hope that it is a predictor of arty events to come in 2009. If the invitation is correct it concludes on January 7 after a brief 5 day run – a pity that it ends so soon.
Not all of it works and some pieces are definitely unresolved, but these are offset by the really good pieces. Having so many paintings in every section of the gallery leads, I feel, to sensory overload. Far fewer would have been better.
I’m really looking forward to seeing where this work will lead Thang next, perhaps to pure minimalism. Wherever, it’s bound to be worth seeing. He’s only 37 so I think the best is yet to come.
If you can get your hands on one of the handsome catalogues you’ll almost have another piece of art to grace your coffee table. They’re gorgeous.
Ceramics at Hoan Kiem
The craft village flower exhibits around Ly Thai To Square on Hoan Kiem Lake were pretty and predictable but one that stood out and would be at home in any good gallery was the ceramic street of old houses complete with lamp posts, almost kitsch but really collectable. It’s worth braving the motorbikes to get a good look.
Another good exhibit to start the year.
First of 2009
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