8 Vietnamese contemporary artists to know now

Posted on 27/06/2014

Art Radar profiles 8 Vietnamese artists participating in the latest exhibition at Craig Thomas Gallery.

Craig Thomas Gallery in Ho Chi Minh City is celebrating its fifth anniversary with a group exhibition by 12 Vietnamese artists. Art Radar picked eight artists whose unique practices explore issues of identity, memory, contemporary society, man’s relationship with nature and international affairs, among others.

Ho Chi Minh City-based Craig Thomas Gallery presents “Coming of Age” (19 June to 17 July 2014), a group exhibition of 12 Vietnamese artists, to celebrate the gallery’s fifth anniversary. The artists on show range from emerging to mid-career and established, and their practices are varied, including digital art, sculpture, oil, acrylic and silk painting, woodburning and woodcarving, and installation.

• Art Radar profiles eight artists from the exhibition whose works comment on and explore issues such as:
• identity
• personal and collective memory
• contemporary society and culture
• traditional culture versus modernity
• political and international affairs
• the relationship between man and nature

Bui Hai Son

Bui Hai Son (b. 1957) is a sculptor based in Ho Chi Minh City. He is a lecturer at the Architecture University of Ho Chi Minh City and has exhibited extensively in Vietnam, Korea and Japan. His work is part of the collection of the Ho Chi Minh City Fine Art Museum, Hanoi’s Vietnam Fine Art Museum, Beasan Park in Iksan, Korea, and the Takanabe Fine Arts Museum, Miyazaki. He has participated in symposia and residencies in Vietnam and Korea.

Bui’s oeuvre comprises small scale to quasi-monumental sculptures, in a variety of media including stone, bronze and other metals. His pieces reference organic structures and forms, emphasising the origin of life and man’s relationship to nature and the environment. His work communicates the desire for a better synergy between man and nature, and prompts the viewer to reflect upon the global environmental impact of human and urban development.

Pham Huy Thong

Pham Huy Thong (b. 1981) is an up-and-coming artist from Hanoi, who is based between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. He grew up in a family of journalists who often had gatherings with their friends and discussed on social issues. Pham, therefore, developed critical skills from a very young age, and after attending a course in journalism at university, he switched to art at the Hanoi Industrial Fine Art University in order to pursue a more adept way to express his concerns and opinions. Pham has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in Vietnam, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, China, Singapore and the United States, and his works are part of private and corporate collections around the world.

Pham’s works are rendered in a surrealist style that is also reminiscent of political pop. Rich in satirical and metaphorical references, his paintings are commentaries on the life and history of his native country and international and social affairs. His 2012 series “Hands” departed from the notion of ‘defacement’ and homogenisation: all the subjects in his paintings had their heads substituted with hands forming different gestures. The series was an exploration of globalisation, Westernisation, consumerism, development aid and other issues.

In his latest painting Captain! Our Ship Has Been Ducked (2014), Pham references the tensions that have recently intensified off the coast of Vietnam between his native country and China.

Lim Khim Ka Ty

Lim Khim Ka Ty (b. 1978) is a Cambodian, Chinese and Vietnamese artist based in Ho Chi Minh City. Her rich cultural background has influenced her work and her vision of the people of her native country who are portrayed in her work with great compassion. Lim, who graduated from the Fine Art University in Ho Chi Minh City, has exhibited extensively around Asia and is among the highest fetching young artists from Vietnam.

Her painting technique involves the exclusive use of palette knives of various sizes, layering paint to give a relief appearance. References to poverty, hardship and street life are apparent throughout her oeuvre. Lim explains that painting for her is like a vessel through which she communicates her emotions towards the less fortunate of the Vietnamese population. The artist often spends time observing migrant workers in the city, whether at construction sites or street vendors and other ‘outsiders’. Her portrayals of these marginalised people in the city express her respect for those who live their life with the greatest instinct for survival, walking through life and hardship with strength and determination.

Often, Lim portrays women in various situations, such as having meals, lying with their children, sitting with their companions, but always immersed or floating in quasi-empty backgrounds to emphasise their emotional state. Lim’s intention is to celebrate the strength of women in her country, who through tradition and culture have had to marry, give birth and work to take care of their family for centuries. The underlying suffering and sacrifices of her kin are of paramount importance in her work, along with a hope for positive change and a better life and future.

Ngo Van Sac

Ngo Van Sac (b. 1980) graduated with an MFA from the Vietnam Fine Art University in Hanoi, and is now a lecturer in Fine Arts at the Hanoi National University of Education. Ngo has exhibited around Asia, North America and Europe and his work is part of several private collections in the country and abroad.

His oeuvre particularly distinguishes itself from that of other young Vietnamese artists through the use of a special medium: painting by woodburning and woodcarving. Layering perspectives, portraits, landscapes and traditional and modern patterns and motifs, his works present a depth of meaning that comments on personal and collective memory, contemporary society, traditional culture and modernity. Ngo’s work features several facial portraits, many of which are self-portraits, as a powerful symbol of introspection, self-reflection, identity and memory.

Bui Thanh Tam

Bui Thanh Tam (b. 1981) currently lives and works in Hanoi, his native city. A graduate from the Hanoi Fine Art University, Bui has been painting throughout his young career. He has achieved great exposure, especially in Hong Kong where his work is highly sought after by collectors.

The uniqueness of his work lies in the subject matter and the portrayal of his co-citizens of Hanoi. Representing people with the faces of water puppets from Vietnam’s traditional theatre, Bui references the homogenisation and the stereotyping of the city’s contemporary population. His portraits are satirical of the class of nouveau riche that has been growing with the country’s steep economic development, whom he calls ‘crazy people’. Greedy for a luxury lifestyle and for modern western culture, these people have, in his eyes, lost their individuality and forgotten their own tradition and cultural heritage, twisting to their own advantage the most superficial aspects of their cultural history.

Bui weaves his multi-layered references through the use of glossy acrylic paint and the collage of traditional Dong Ho paper paintings to comment on the loss of culture and tradition in the race for modernisation and globalisation.

Tran Minh Tam

Tran Minh Tam (b. 1976) is based in Ho Chi Minh City. Although he hasn’t exhibited extensively yet, his work is of particular interest for its rich references to the fading traditional culture, history and heritage of Vietnam.

Painting on antique wooden supports and pieces of furniture, such as doors, windows and table tops, his polished portraits represent historical figures that are part of Vietnam’s rich history, as well as imagined figures of past nobility. With rich details on their dresses and attire, the portraits exhume an almost enticing ghostly quality as if the subjects were looking at the viewer from a mirror or a window. Tran’s aim is to remind his compatriots that heritage, tradition and culture are as important as development and open-mindedness, and not something that should be lost or considered backwards.

Bui Tien Tuan

Bui Tien Tuan (b. 1971) is a lecturer at the Ho Chi Minh City Fine Art University in the Silk Painting department. He has exhibited extensively throughout Vietnam and Asia, including Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan, where the medium of silk is highly prized.

One of the downsides of modernisation is the propensity for a society’s treasured cultural traditions and customs to be diluted and even abandoned, a phenomenon that often manifests itself in the arts, where traditional media give way to contemporary forms of expression. Today, many artists are returning to their roots for inspiration and are using traditional media to express modern concerns. Bui is one of these artists, capable of treasuring and transforming their heritage into something new.

His mastery of silk painting prevents any limitations of the traditional medium, which historically was mainly used to portray traditional landscapes. Bui uses the traditional medium in a contemporary fashion, portraying beautiful liberated young ladies – his so-called “urban girls” – in vibrantly coloured dresses or in provocative yet subtle nudes. Inspired by the Japanese art of ukiyo-e, Bui’s compositions depict the city’s ‘floating world’ of femininity, celebrating women and their emancipation in a country where the female sex has long been regarded as submissive and prude.

Khoa Le

Khoa Le (b. 1982) is a digital artist, illustrator, graphic designer and painter based in Ho Chi Minh City. Le graduated from the Graphic Design Department of the Ho Chi Minh City Fine Art University. She now works for a publishing house and does illustrations for books. Her works have been exhibited in Vietnam and around Asia, including Singapore, Malaysia and Korea.

Le’s intricate, dreamy compositions are first done with watercolour on paper to create the background texture and colour. After scanning this into the computer, Le then creates her characters, her colour fillings and all the details through various layers. Printed on textured paper, her works present a depth of perspective and a richness in detail that draws the viewer into an imaginary world filled with symbolism and layered narratives.

Le’s works are playful in appearance, but on closer inspection they reveal a deep concern with personal and human issues, such as a girl’s coming of age, the relationship between man and nature, life and death, among others.

C. A. Xuan Mai Ardia

Source: http://artradarjournal.com/2014/06/27/8-vietnamese-contemporary-artists-to-know-now/