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NEW SPACE GALLERY
A new gallery is opening in Centre of Hue city. Thanh and Hai are twins brother artist. They are opening the gallery as an outlet for their many ideas to the festival Hue 2000. Thanh and Hai will present the works of Paris_based sculptor and another countries in the world.
Both Thanh and Hai have been looking for an art space over the years for our varied exhibition and find it difficult in France. There also doesnâ€™t seen to be much access for local artists to show off beat works. We hope to attract young and established artists as well as other like us looking for space to do things. We want it to be an accessible creative outlet for this budding artistic community. Say Thanh and Hai . New art gallery will be used as an exhibition space for artists or individuals seeking hard to find art space, exhibition space in Asian countries. For more information please contact
LE NGOC THANH_LE DUC HAI
Address: New Space Art Gallery I
28 Nguyen Tri Phuong Street Hue City, Viet Nam
Address: New Space Art Gallery II
28 Pham Ngu Lao Street Hue City, Viet Nam
Mobile: (84) 91 349 0120
Fax: (84) 54 849 353

THANH & HAI

LE DUC HAI and LE NGOC THANH paintings are a fusion of East and West. The legacy of the French Impressionists, the rich Vietnameses cultural traditions and spiritual symbolism are readily apparent in their paintings.The most distinctive characteristics of their work are that they have forsaken realism anh are eagerly integrating their energies and emotions into full explosive colours to create impressive graphic abstractions of their very individual style. They also have used lacquer as a medium for their art work.
The artwork of the two brothers, paintings on paper and lacquer on wood, give us visual impressions of what they themselves have seen and experienced in their young lives in their province of Quang Binh, Vietnam. In their painting, we see images of marketwomen selling fish, women without fancy clothes, men crouching under a barbed wire fence, and children waiting to grow up.
Their works is simplified in form and powerful in its impact. Human figures resolve to geometric shapes, such as the triangular cone_ shaped hats, and rectangular or circular bodies. Faces may be round, or maybe left as unfilled, black spaces. Elements such as shadow and internal lines are left out, so that the figures stand out in almost primitive fashion.
But art comes not only from what we see, but also from what is inside our minds. Some of the artwork of the Le brothers takes on a remarkable imaginative quality, where the real image is augmented with extraordinaty symbols to tell the story.
The twin brothers were born on the thid of April, 1975, about 26 days before the official end of the decades long war in Vietnam. The war is a big theme in their work. 'Women Waiting' by Le Ngoc Thanh, a deceivingly simple acrylic painting on paper, shows two chairs againts a red background. Two women are sitting in the chairs, but their figures and faces can hardly be seen.These women are thinking about their husbands, who went to fight in the war, explained Thanh. They are waiting for them, but they haven't come home, so I didn't draw their faces.
In the middle, hanging between the two women is a kerosene lantern. This lamp appears in many of their paintings.'Lamps are symbols of waiting' said Thanh. This theme is repeated again in their art: wonem waiting for their husbands, men waiting for a better life, children waiting for their future. In their village, as in their country, people have been waiting for things to change for a long time.
Lanterns also appear in 'Sad Men,'another work by Thanh, in acrylic on a paper. This work features a long row of paintings entwinded by barbed wire, which is painted on to the wall of the room in the museum. Each square of a paper is a different colour, and shows the male figure in near fetal posture, circular arms wrapping around heads, torsos and knees. In front of the disply is a lantern on a small stool, and in some of the paintings the men are holding lanterns. The plight of children also concerns the young artists very much 'Children Dreaming' by Thanh , is a series of nice paintings on a paper which were hung on a wall in three rows.' Children have a hard life in my country, they must work a lot and they don't have time for play or for their pleasure. But when they dream, that the only time they can get away, and imagine a different life for themselves.
The indentification with country is strong in the two brothers. Look to my country, by Le Duc Hai, acrylic on a paper, was created to show the feelings of the artist being aboard. My body is here, but my mind and my heart think about my country,he explained. The paper is deep red, and the other colour are equally intense. Two faces look out across the painting , each face with four eyes. The hair of the two heads is stylized, long and flowing, like that of the two brothers. Beyond the faces lie an array of symbols, such as dots, hearts, and liness.
The extra eyes have special meaning. ' We look at history, we look into the future, we need eyes for seeing many things, said Hai. Part of good art is seeing, and the brothers realize the importance of this. The multiple eyes appear in several other paintings a new shape, and also to create powerful lines which dominate the layout of the composition. The top line of their hats becomes a horizontal line that runs across the paintings, and the inside line where their hats come together makes a vertical line, the whole composition is bisected and divided into quadrants. Having done this, the artist places a fish in each of the top two quadrants, facing outward from the centrer, while the women faces look away from the centrer in the bottom two quadrants. In this way, everything in the painting seems to emanate outward from an origin point where the two lines intersect. The fish reappears in many of the lacquer paintings, being used both as a symbol for food, sustenance, and as a source of income for the fish sellers. Women, also, seem to dominate these paintings, being the ones engaged in the activity which feeds both them and the people of their communities.
Color in these paintings is clear, warm, and applied in generous brush strokes. Strokes may be visible, with a second shade seeping through from the background......

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