Artists
Gilles Tran
Nguyen Huu Khoa
Tran Dan
Le Huy
Le Vo Tuan
Le Duc Hai - Le Ngoc Thanh
Sue Pedley
Gail joy Kenning
Nguyen Nhu Huy
Dinh Cong Dat
Luong Luu Bien
Tran Huu Nhat
Tran Trung Linh
Bui Bao Quoc
Truong Thien
Dinh Cong Dat
Nguyen Nhu Huy
Ngo Thai Uyen
Nguyen Thanh Truc
Rodney Dickson
Colin McGookin
Bonita Ely
Bui Cong Khanh
Glen Clarke
Le A
Ben Puah
Tiffany Chung
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Rodney Dickson
War Is Over right here right now
January 16th February 28th, 2004.
Mai's Gallery
16 Nguyen Hue Street, District 1, Hochiminh City, Vietnam.
The paintings chosen for the show are from the series Dickson painted during
his three-month residency in Hanoi in the fall of 2000 -- one of his several trips
to Vietnam in the past decade when he observed the practice of ancestor worship,
an essential element in Vietnamese culture. And although Dickson was not
interested in ancestor worship per se as it exists there, it was "a convenient
philosophy that fits in with my own idea that people leave their presence
behind them when they go away, at least in our memory if nothing more than that,"
Dickson said in his studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
The paintings, with small drawings stapled on - showing faces faintly, as portraits
of the dead, appear to be very different from his usual work, as Dickson used
only materials that he could find in Vietnam bamboo blinds, Vietnamese water-based
powder paint, silver leaf as is used in Vietnamese lacquer work and often
seen in pagodas, Japanese lacquer and do (Vietnamese rice paper) while
incorporating traditional Vietnamese techniques with his modern and western
application. The look of the paintings was influenced by the look of the inside of the
many pagodas Dickson visited in and around Hanoi.
The underlying theme of the paintings -- absence, memory and the passage of
time however, has been central to Dickson's work for the past 10 years since
he finished his International Studio Artist Program at P.S. 1. Museum, in 1993.
Coming from Northern Ireland and being around a lot of violence, Dickson has
seen people die, be killed, or go away, and wondered how people cope with that
kind of loss. This series, a result of Dickson's cooperation with Vietnamese artists
and writers, relates to his interest in the futility of war and how we remember the past
and people.
In Hanoi, Dickson asked some Vietnamese artists and intellectuals, including the
famous writer Bao Ninh of "The Sorrow of War", to write a message to the imaginary
persons in the drawings, as if they were loved ones that had gone away or died.
The writings which were later attached to Dickson's paintings -- are very personal,
beautiful and moving, as often these people wrote poems, and often they related to
the immense suffering of the Vietnamese people through the devastation of war.
On one painting is a text by Tran Luong a well-known painter of Vietnam's younger
generation about how water flows always and how it continues toflow no matter
what happens in the world.
This is a metaphor for 'Life'. Tran Luong became interested in water when as a
child, he was evacuated to the countryside to avoid the American bombing on Hanoi.
In the countryside he would sit and look at pools of water and imagine the life that
took place under the water. Since then he became an artist and water is an important
theme in his work.
On another is a poem by Duong Tuong, a writer of the older generation, written as a
memorial to the American and Vietnamese soldiers who died during the Vietnam War.
The writer had posted this poem, a statement on the futility of war, on the Vietnam
Wall in D.C. when he visited there some years ago:
"Because I never knew you
Nor did you me
I come
Because you left behind mother father
and betrothed
and I wife and children
I come
Because love is stronger than enmity
and can bridge oceans
I come
Because you never return
and I do
I come"
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Press Release by Nguyen Trinh Thi
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