Living space by Le Thanh Thu
Artist Le Thanh Thu (R) take photogrape with Yukio Ogushi,
a Japanese curator, exhibition organizer and painting collector,
at the opening of the exhibition yesterday.
“ Living space”, a painting exhibition by Vietnamese artist Le Thanh Thu, features 35 paintings of oil and acrylic which depict the daily living space witnessed by the artist.
This space includes people , hotels, restaurants, churches and objects illustrated by signals, simple lines in red, black or white and yellow colors.
Viewers may recognize their own living space through the images of people in sitting, walking and carrying postures, and through familiar objects like tables, chairs, lights, rivers, landscapes studded with words such as “xe om” (motorcycle taxi), “café”, “pho”(noodle soup served with beef or chicken) and “khoan cat be tong”(concrete dismantling service).
“This is really the living space of Saigon which is characterized by hustle, bustle and cramp. However, the artist managed to make it look more spacious and orderly. I think it will look better if it has the image of the everyday traffic jam in Saigon,”says visitor Huyen Tran.
For his part, the artist said, “ That is the living space of Vietnam, of Saigon and of even people’s soul and mind. It is so busy and cramped that people can feel suffocated.”
Yukio Ogushi, a Japanese curator, exhibition organizer and painting collector, said, “ Vietnamese artists today do not paint landscapes but they paint happenings around them everyday, social phenomena, people’s thoughts, preoccupations and life and that is contemporary arts.
I appreciate unique creativeness, profound passion and painstaking diligence of Vietnamese contemporary artists in general and of Thu in spectacular. I am excited to count the phone numbers as well as read works such as” xe om”, café” or “ pho” in Thu’ s paintings and that is a familiar image of Vietnam’s real living space.”
The exhibition at Phuong Mai Art Gallery, 129B Le Thanh Ton Street, HCMC’s District 1 runs till Dec.30.
By My Tran in HCMC
From the Saigon Times Daily
