Where Are They Now?

John Ashcroft would be up in arms.  For if there’s one thing that drives some conservatives to a fury more than partially nude statues, it would be the defacement of a country’s symbol.  No, it wasn’t a flag.  There was a line of “toilet paper” rolls on the wall of Pacific Bridge gallery’s walls… and this wasn’t an ode to Duchamp’s victorious latrine.  The toilet paper was made of American dollars.  Hmmm… at least it looked like US dollars but upon closer inspection were beautifully detailed drawings of US dollar copies but with words, symbols and portraits that referred to historical and contemporary Vietnamese politics.  So maybe Ashcroft wouldn’t be offended, but who would?

This exhibition entitled “Mr. Nguyen” in 2000 was my first exposure to Nguyen Van Cuong’s work and he was showing alongside Nguyen Minh Thanh and Nguyen Quang Huy.  The venue was Pacific Bridge, a gallery and artist residency founded by Beth Gates and Geoff Dorn in Oakland to promote and create a cultural exchange with contemporary artists from Southeast Asia to an American audience. At the time, my own knowledge about contemporary Vietnamese art from Vietnam was very limited and I remember being somewhat surprised not only at the conceptual nature of the work but also how politically charged the work was considering the artists worked under a communist government.

In the mid 1950s the Russian Artist Konstantin Maksimov taught at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing and whose Socialist Realist influence on a generation of Chinese painters/artists could be seen in the decades to come. From my conversations with artists in Hanoi, the German artist Veronika Radulovic had similar effect.  From 1994 to 2005 she worked as a lecturer at the Hanoi University of Fine Arts, bringing to her students what I gather to be a whole slew of western art concepts and history with a particularly strong emphasis on the latter half of the twentieth century including conceptually based work.  Her students included the three artists exhibited in “Mr. Nguyen”.

Pacific Bridge’s Beth Gates is at it again.  Relocated in Portland and teamed up with Alicia Johnson of Alicia Blue Gallery, they bring you “Where Are They Now,” an exhibition that showcases work from the artists Nguyen Van Cuong and Le Hong Thai. Both artists are showing works on paper that comment on the complex forces and contradictions that have occurred with westernization in Vietnam in the last 20 years.

According to Gates and Johnson,  “Le Hong Thai’s work is also a commentary on the world we live in, but his visual style is more likened to poetry.  In the series of works on newsprint in “Where Are They Now” Thai weaves a dream like narrative with recurring figures and imagery that come in and out of focus and fade across the pages…Thai is renowned for his contemporary paintings in lacquer.  The materials of lacquer on wood panel are also traditional art materials in Vietnam, and taught to fine art students at the university level.  Very few artists master the materials and techniques well enough, nor have the patience for the labor and time intensive technique, to continue to work in lacquer after leaving the university.  Similar to the works on newsprint in this exhibition Thai’s works in lacquer envelop the viewer in a trance-like contemplation of people and places familiar and yet unknown.”

My first exposure to Thai’s work was in 1999 at an exhibition at Pacific Bridge entitled “Reincarnation” with Vu Dan Tan.  The work included aesthetic transformations you would not see hung in the lovely artist commercial galleries in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. What I mean by that: they took a 1961 Cadillac and piano and fused them into Icarus type icons complete with wings and gold.  In Vietnam both these artists are forced to work on much smaller art pieces. The same can probably be assumed of Cuong’s artistic experiences.  Both he and Thai have exhibited widely in Europe, Japan, SE Asia and Australia, as well as in California.  One has to wonder how much geography plays into not just the scale of their creations, but of course, the content.  Which brings me back to my original question… just who is their intended audience? (Probably not Ashcroft.) The foreign community that exhibits their work? Viet Kieu… or Vietnamese citizens?

My initial reaction at the political nature of the Cuong’s work was re-examined by a Viet Kieu woman in 2005 during an panel discussion that coincided with an exhibition I took part in entitled “Out of Context” at the Huntington Beach Art Center, which included both Vietnamese American and Vietnamese artists.  She asked the Vietnamese artists if they felt making artwork under a communist government was difficult. All eyes went to the artists from Vietnam.  A few comments were given to ease the tension but finally, Nguyen Quang Huy put it plainly and eloquently.  “Here in America you can say anything you want (with your artwork), but sometimes that isn’t the best way. I think working in Vietnam makes you more creative about how and what you say.”

Simply put: that’s the beauty of art.  No matter how didactic it may seem, it can effectively pose questions that still remain open.  Works that were created 10 years ago still resonate today and audiences of various communities can relate as the visual language transcends generations, cultures and international experiences.

This is the first time Nguyen Van Cuong and Le Hong Thai’s works are being exhibited in Portland.  Both artists are invited to come to Portland in 2011 as artists in residence while they have a second exhibition at Alicia Blue Gallery.

Lien Truong

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