LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL
“Life is beautiful” is a new slice in the creative process of Vu Dinh Tuan, it consists of a number of serial artworks viz. Egg, HER, Happy Footsteps, Dance, Happiness, Ladies, Somnambulism, A Contemporary Day
…the pictures reveal the artist’s passionate and serious work as well
as his constant search for creative ideas which is both radical and
flexible, consistent and incessantly innovative.
The
pictures bring about a new, modern atmosphere, truly a cheerful feast
shining with tints and colours, painting lines and strokes. There are no
more old stories of rural markets, fishermen’s villages, the landscapes
of a banyan tree, a wharf or a sampan …to bore the viewer’s eyes. And
are dying out also the plain and aesthetically familiar range of colours
we often see in traditional wood -cuts.
The set of prints Ladies appear
as a splendid carnival with all kinds of affected clothing and masks,
ancient and modern alike, miscellaneous and ever - transforming. You may
see Ladies with a graceful gait and a traditional appearance who
are very knowledgeable about music, chess, poetry and painting. And
there are also nude Ladies who are very modernist with their
bodies freely decorated with patterns after the “body art” style in
vogue recently in the world. The masks look rather comic and bizarre,
from the faces of flowers, birds, owls to those of wild beasts
transformed into phoenixes…They evoke varied metaphors and associations
of ideas: are they gentle or superficial? Sincere or treacherous? The
Muse or devil? Beside the authority, luxury, glitter and attraction of
this feminine world there prevails a sense of insecurity, a danger
signal which warns that the world of humans nowadays has lost its
ancient purity and simplicity: it is covered up by sheaths and packaging
of ads and deception with the possible threat of wars. Be on your
guard!
The set of prints Happy Footsteps, Dance, Happiness express
the joy of life and human aspiration for love. This simple and eternal
topic is exploited and developed by Vò §×nh TuÊn though his free,
fanciful plastic art rhythms and the diversified composition with
gentle, liberal lines and strokes, very fine and close to art. The range
of colours is fresh and novel, going far beyond the simple, limited one
used in traditional, folk woodcuts. With a bit of attention, you’ll
notice that the artist has skilfully executed the colour masses by
sophisticated engravings, imprints of superimposed colours, supplemented
by decorative patterns to induce gentleness anal a subtle harmony of
colours. This will enrich Vò §×nh TuÊn’s works with the graceful,
elegant richness of the sense of beauty in modern art, thus lessening
the dryness inherent in woodcuts.
Apart from the sublimation of love, natural instinct and reproductive vitality concealed under childish picture titles such as Nu na nu nèng ( lit. onomatopoeia, a children’s game), Chång nô chång hoa
(lit. Superimposing buds and flowers – a children’s game) once again we
see Vò §×nh TuÊn coming back to complex, confused, hallucinatory states
of mind in his set of pictures Somnambulism. Here there are
still human figures but they do not go in pair harmoniously, quite on
the contrary, they behave as adversaries, roaring and writhing in a
confined, strained space amid an environment infected by owls and
snakes: such a heavy range of colours with dark spaces! Could it be that
the artist has a permanent premonition about the world today, the one
that is not always peaceful and serene but full of obscurity and
insecurity instead.
For
a long time, Vò §×nh TuÊn has been known as a competent artist in the
field of woodcuts and silk paintings marked by several fine art awards.
“Life is beautiful” is his first solo exhibition of woodcuts. The art
display shows that Vò §×nh TuÊn, on the basis of national artistic
tradition and his own talent, has made a new advance both in artistic
language as well in the technique of printing woodcuts. He is openly and
efficiently receptive to Oriental and Western influences, to modern
aesthetics and the present-day sense of beauty with a view of finding
out his own way and individual style. That leads to a remarkable success
in the present art exhibiton.
Hanoi, October 2009.
Bui Nhu Huong
Art critic.
(English Translation
by
The Hung,Ph.D.)