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2009	May 14	HANOI PARALLAX

	Apr 17	Oh! City!

	Mar 07	Down to Freezing-point

	Jan 07	YEAR-END-DELIGHTS and URBAN DISCOVERIES

2008	Sep 01	WATERCOLOUR BRUSHWORKS and Contemporary CALLIGRAPHY

	Jun 29	Motion in Gray

	May 10	The non-objectitve world - Nguyen Duy Linh

	Mar 16	the Shoe, the Puppet, the Motion - Graphic Art Vietnam-China

2007	Sep 22	Script & Avant-garde Calligraphy

New photographs of international fine art photographer Lawrence D'Attilio. Having viewed Mr. D'Attilio's splendid and remarkable photographs at the National Fine Arts Museum just a year ago, he now comes up with an even more wonderful solo exhibition at studio tho. Larry D'Attilio thought that museum exhibit would just be a beginning and since then he continued to explore his feelings about Hanoi for two more years. This exhibition expresses a parallax of different approaches of what he loves about Hanoi and why he feels it is one of the most exciting cities in the world. All photographs are printed in a limited edition of twelve and meet all requirements of photograph collectors as well as for home or office decoration.

"OH! CITY" - New paintings by Artist Đỗ Tuấn Anh - runs until 11th May, 2009.

Click & read - from the Grapevine Press: By "KTV" on "OH! CITY"

From the catalogue: "Looking back at Do Tuan Anh’s paintings in the 2007 New York exhibition, we quickly noticed the formidable quality of his illustrative and as well conceptual approaches to painting and his form of expression.

It soon became clear that this artist deserved special attention. Spontaneously we invited him to exhibit his works at studio tho asia fine art gallery in Hanoi. What he has produced for this exhibition can join the league of shining examples of truly contemporary Vietnamese art.
Working seriously and concentrating for over a year, he has attained an impressive quality of illustration and intensity depicting a Vietnam in transition. Viewing his large canvases, we straightway realize what speaks for itself: the social-economic contrasts between the fast growing molochs of Hanoi and Saigon, each a land-eating metropolis, and the illusions, desires, aspirational thoughts of traditional people. Coming from the countryside and pouring into the big cities in search for better life, they are often poured right back, disillusioned.

The painting DECEPTIVE DREAM reveals the contradictions of urbanism: it is a city of allegories of vision and modernity tied to the image of METROPOLIS - the image of a ‘machine‘, which reminds us of the legendary silent film “METROPOLIS” by Fritz Lang (1926).

We are happy to present this series of large pictures masterfully depicting resent and contemporary developments in Vietnamese art. We hope that this exhibition will serve its purpose, namely to increase awareness of society by paying attention to the changes in everyone’s environments. "

Le Vo Tuan

Motion in Gray is a series of paintings and video art created between 2006 and 2008.

Motion in Gray is a world hidden behind my creative aspiration. It’s a yearning for change of my Self, of my personal way of artistic expression.

Motion in Gray differs from my previous style and marks the first step towards change.

Motion in Gray represents my view of the world revolving around me, a world full of thoughts, partly hidden, partly lying openly scattered around in the streets and alleys of life.

Motion in Gray is the result of my direct look at people, at all the thoughts about our present world that come to haunt me.

Motion in Gray represents my new artistic perspective and points at the change after many years of professional experience.

Motion in Gray is the result of my personal endeavours, a stream in invisible depths towards a new horizon, a continuous creative movement, a new phase in my artistic development.

Motion in Gray is a realistic look at contemporary society, at man amidst the whirlpools of digitalisation, urbanisation, information, that, for their part, throw back a challenging and provoking glance at the viewer.

Motion in Gray is an expression of man’s love of life and of his surroundings. Everything revolves around the hope for a better life in the future.

Motion in Gray is a series of pictures dealing with social problems in our cities. In each work, I want to express the loss of balance caused by the destruction of the environment and living quarters made of concrete. But they also reflect the nightmarish consequences of the population explosion, the constantly worsening traffic jams… However, I poured my love of life and of its creation into each and everyone of these works.

Motion in Gray is a series of paintings and video art created between 2006 and 2008.

Motion in Gray is a world hidden behind my creative aspiration. It’s a yearning for change of my Self, of my personal way of artistic expression.

Motion in Gray differs from my previous style and marks the first step towards change.

Motion in Gray represents my view of the world revolving around me, a world full of thoughts, partly hidden, partly lying openly scattered around in the streets and alleys of life.

Motion in Gray is the result of my direct look at people, at all the thoughts about our present world that come to haunt me.

Motion in Gray represents my new artistic perspective and points at the change after many years of professional experience.

Motion in Gray is the result of my personal endeavours, a stream in invisible depths towards a new horizon, a continuous creative movement, a new phase in my artistic development.

Motion in Gray is a realistic look at contemporary society, at man amidst the whirlpools of digitalisation, urbanisation, information, that, for their part, throw back a challenging and provoking glance at the viewer.

Motion in Gray is an expression of man’s love of life and of his surroundings. Everything revolves around the hope for a better life in the future.

Motion in Gray is a series of pictures dealing with social problems in our cities. In each work, I want to express the loss of balance caused by the destruction of the environment and living quarters made of concrete. But they also reflect the nightmarish consequences of the population explosion, the constantly worsening traffic jams… However, I poured my love of life and of its creation into each and everyone of these works.

Introduction

The exhibition deals with an art genre that has not been given much attention in Vietnam. The Hanoi based \'Zenei Gang of Five\' have only lately started introducing their avant-garde style in calligraphy. Their leader - Le Quoc Viet - has repeatedly curated group exhibitions in Vietnam since the year 2000, shown in the Van Mieu Literature Temple and elsewhere. In Vietnam the number of calligraphers is small, perhaps not more than 100 people whose patronage keeps this tradition alive. Only five of them are focussing on a specific avant-garde style being introduced in this exhibition and they must be seen as forerunners of modern Vietnamese calligraphy in its specific and unique avant-garde form.
Artistically, calligraphers have been questioning the nature of the art of calligraphy, the need for legibility. The different calligraphy schools in Asia provide different answers to the questions in a variety of styles. Their followers in Korea, China and Vietnam are all sensitive to both the proper study of calligraphy directly from the Chinese classics. However, it seems that only the avant-gardists respond to the developments of modern art in the world.
What are the specifics of avant-garde calligraphy? It is an abstract work produced in the same way as a piece of traditional calligraphy: Black ink is used, it has a definite stroke order, a similar performance-style of execution by ink-brush and is often based on a character with a meaning. The script-character is almost always so distorted that it is not possible to discern its meaning. The title of the artwork often refers to the character or group of characters from which it is derived, but not always. Some characters are transformed to images in ink, a freer and more radical expression. Avant-garde calligraphy developed beyond the classic calligraphic limits and then encompasses more pictorial work. Titles are usually freely chosen.

Calligraphy as practised by the Vietnamese \'Zenei Gang of Five\' is calligraphy by virtue of its methodology and style of production and by the definition of calligraphy as an art of lines in general. It is, therefore, not surprising that the avant-garde calligraphers’ main characteristics are that they take a dim view of those more conservative critics who say their work is not calligraphy because it is sometimes not legible. Their main response to this accusation is based on the fact that illegible calligraphy can be and is enjoyed as an abstract work - and for good reasons - also in the West. The many abstract calligraphy exhibitions in Europe and the US prove this - where fans of Eastern calligraphy do not necessarily understand the scripts. They argue that legibility has always been a problem for cursive ‘handwriting’ scripts (also in other cultures), but their formal beauty is still been appreciated. Legibility as such is only a problem when content is considered as important as form. Some think so, some do not. If the piece is not written to give information, it does not matter if it cannot be read! Le Quoc Viet, being asked for the meaning of some calligraphies, answers simply “no meaning!”

The Vietnamese version combines both Han and Nom script characters, free-hand drawing with ink-watercolour, stamping from woodblocks, prints from stone and wooden seals, and stone rubbings from ancient epitaphs found in pagodas. Some technical ink applications on handmade paper made from traditional mulberry tree bark (not from \'rice\'- paper, as many tend to believe) are first seen in Vietnam.

Calligraphies do not only appeal to the eyes. Some viewers might look at them as being \'only decorative\', others might be attracted by the applied techniques or the pure abstractness, while some will appreciate them for the knowledge of Chinese script. However, for the latter they will hardly fail to open another more meaningful world: Poetic quotes by historical persons such as Ho Xuan Huong, Nguyen Du, Nguyen Binh, Trinh Cong Son etc., are equally found and are an expression of the specific national character.The calligraphic pieces shown in this exhibition do not pale in comparison with parallel developments in neighbor Asian countries - China, Korea and Japan . We are happy to introduce this new modern art genre to our visitors and hope that it will attract as much attention as it deserves from native and foreign audiences.

Thomas Ulbrich - Studio Tho art director

Avant-Garde Calligraphy and the “Zen’ei Gang of Five”

Zen’ei, the Japanese Term for Avant-garde, entered into the aesthetic discussion in the early years after World War II. It was a time of moral breakdown and economic crisis, after a devastating war that had caused indescribable misery to millions of victims of Japanese aggression throughout Asia, but also to Japan itself, most dramatically in the horrors of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nevertheless, the poverty-stricken post-war years in Japan were also marked by an exceptional outburst of creativity in the arts. Japanese artists in the early 1950ies enthusiastically welcomed the new spirit of freedom, after many years of ultra-nationalism, violence and fear. “Sho”, the art of writing, had a surprisingly strong part in these avant-garde movements. This was to a large extent due to the fact that a calligraphic approach towards art was a leading feature of abstract expressionism, the most powerful international art movement in those early post-war years. Celebrated artists of those years in the U.S.A. and Europe, like Jackson Pollock, Marc Tobey, Pierre Soulage and Hans Hartung were heavily influenced by East Asian calligraphy. And this trend greatly inspired artists in Japan to break up the rules of the ancient art of writing that had for centuries followed a tradition going back to the the time-honoured masters of classic Chinese calligraphy, like Wang Xizhi (307 – 365) and even beyond that.It goes without saying that there had always also been eccentrics in calligraphy, such as the Chinese Huai Su (737 – 799) whose famous “autobiography” is a superb example of a highly expressive, personal style of cursive script. But radical post-war avant-garde calligraphers like Inoue Yûichi (1916 – 1985) sometimes actually went beyond the limits of writing readable characters, thus blurring the border between writing and painting. And this step into an abstract sphere of expression is in fact something new in the Japanese writers’ avant-garde of the 1950ies. The proximity of calligraphy and painting in the Japanese avant-garde movements of the 1950ies certainly is a unique feature of this period. With the rise of Pop Art in America in the 1960ies, the vigour of this movement gradually decreased. There still are artists, like those organized in the calligraphers’ association Mainichi Shodokai, who until today go on in exploring an avant-garde style in the art of writing in Japan. However, their significance in contemporary art is rather limited.

But what does Zen’ei Calligraphy mean in Hanoi in 2007? It is certainly a great surprise to witness the emergence of a modern calligraphy scene, using the Japanese term “zen’ei” as their motto, in a country that long ago decided to abandon the Chinese writing system and replace it by European letters. To me this experiment looks like a statement of detachment from the mainstreams of contemporary Asian art trends, and perhaps a statement of criticism towards an internationalization in gallery art that just follows mainstream fashion developments in the West or other boom regions of contemporary art, like China or India. Like Le Quoc Viets blackened teeth are referring to a pre-colonial ideal of human beauty, the rediscovery of the beauty of Chinese characters is yet another exploration of the hidden aesthetic heritage of a country that has had intense ties with her powerful neighbour China for more than 2000 years, but went through devastating changes and destruction in the twentieth century. It is hard to predict where this road will be leading. Vietnam certainly is a new-comer in the international art world. But it is a promising sign to see that in just a few years, “Zen’ei Gang of Five” has come up with an art style of her own that is far from following fashionable trends in the major centers of contemporary Asian art.

The merging of images and written characters in Le Quoc Viet’s recent works reveal an artist’s hand of remarkable power. It may in fact be an advantage that as a Vietnamese he is able to look at the century-old art of East Asian calligraphy from a semi-outside position. At least this may give him more freedom of expression, far away from the burden of tradition that calligraphy in China and Japan sometimes suffers from. The works of Le Quoc Viet and his group have the freshness and playfulness of a new experiment, the spontaneity of an artistic project that follows an open road that may lead here or there. Although it is too early to give a final statement about these new developments in Vietnamese art it is certainly very advisable to keep “Zen’ei Gang of Five” in mind and watch out how this avant-garde of the South will move on in the next few years. There may be a number of surprises ahead.

Frankfurt, in September 2007
Stephan von der Schulenburg

Art Photography

Calligraphy

Chinese Woodblock Prints

Contemporary Art

Graphic Art

Vintage & Antique Art

The non-objectitve world of Nguyen Duy Linh

‘the Shoe, the Puppet, the Motion’

Introduction