Description

The exhibition’s name, “Thanh Sắc”, is Chinese in origin and has several connotations. To name a few translations, it can be interpreted as “clear sound”, “sharp sight”, “penetrating gaze”, “voice of color”, “color of sound”, “irreproachable feminine beauty”, “pure passion”, “exact intonation”, or “distinctive look.” Vũ Dân Tân’s three-dimensional objects from the three men show (Lê Hồng Thái, Eric Leroux, and himself) convey ideas of general music culture and the artist’s desire to give a new poetic life to the mundane discarded materials. The exhibition, which explores the relationship between image and sound, is in line with earlier imitative made by Salon Natasha artists to probe visual art and music correlations. Additionally, this is Vũ Dân Tân and Lê Hồng Thái’s second time collaborating on a sound-music performance ( after the music performance using Icarus – piano, created by Vũ Dân Tân, which took place at the Pacific Bridge Gallery in Oakland, California, USA in 1999). The exhibition and performance “Thanh Sắc” or “Clear Sound” challenged viewers to engage with artwork by sharing ideas that are fluid rather than rigid of fixed.

Text by Iola Lenzi, PhD, Historian of Contemporary Southeast Asian Art. Lenzi has conducted extensive research on the contemporary practice of Vũ Dân Tân, located in the context of contemporary art in 1990s Hanoi.