“EARTH” EXHIBITION - CURATORIAL TEXT

EARTH marks the return of Ly Truc Son to the art scene with his first solo exhibition in nearly a decade, showcasing the culmination of ten years of relentless creativity and exploration in pursuit of a new artistic language. Having bid farewell to lacquer—a traditional visual medium synonymous with his name—and the fluidity of paper, which accompanied him through his years of wandering abroad, EARTH represents a profound convergence of materials, space, time, creative language, mindset, and artistic spirit. It symbolizes the origin, source, and essence of both nature and humanity; it is the beginning and the end, the visible and the invisible, the mundane and the sacred.

 

Driven by a deep ambition to craft a distinctive artistic language, one that accomplishes what the great Vietnamese masters have yet to complete, Ly Truc Son seeks to position the art of a marginal region alongside the world’s most renowned painters. His work embodies the spirit of Western art, drawing inspiration from pre-Renaissance ideals and the artistic languages of Tapies, Rothko, Giacometti, and Uecker, while also embracing the cultural essence of the East, evident in the folk motifs, patterns, and forms of the Ly and Tran dynasties. Experimenting with primitive natural materials such as soil, stone, sand, and plants, Ly Truc Son taps into the primal origins of abstract language, striving to capture and preserve the enigmatic mysteries of the time and space in which he exists. He rejects the artificial constraints of time, space, and historicization. In a landscape where contemporary Vietnamese art has often been confined to the narrative of Đổi Mới, with its reductive divisions of North and South, West and East, abstract and socialist realism trends, how then does one define an artist who transcends these boundaries? EARTH might well be a response to the absence of abstract art in the North, a testament to Ly Truc Son's quest for an identity beyond the limitations of time and place.

 

In the rich debates and discourses surrounding abstract art in the history of modern and contemporary art, one of the most influential theories comes from American critic Clement Greenberg. He famously argued that Abstract Expressionism is an art form that exists purely for its own sake—painting that is simply about painting, stripped of any political, ideological, or symbolic function. On the other hand, artist and art historian Eva Cockcroft’s essay discusses how Abstract Expressionism was wielded as a cultural weapon during the Cold War. The significance of abstract art within modernism, as well as the ways it challenges and interrogates modernity in today's global contemporary art, remains undeniable.

 

The renowned German painter and sculptor Hans Arp once remarked: “Art is a fruit growing out of a man like the fruit out of a plant, like the child out of the mother. While the fruit of the plant assumes independent forms and never strives to resemble a helicopter or a president in a cutaway, the artistic fruit of man shows, for the most part, ridiculous ambition to imitate the appearance of other things. I like nature but not its substitutes.” Arp’s witty yet profound observation about the futility of art in mimicking the world underscores the essence of abstract art in creating its own realm and space. This idea resonates with the works of Ly Truc Son.

 

Rather than attempting to decipher and interpret the meaning behind the more than 70 pieces on display, EARTH invites viewers to immerse themselves in a state of trance, contemplating the enigmatic allure that emanates from the artist’s unconscious or the physicality of the materials Ly Truc Son has carefully distilled to craft his unique cosmology.

 

Hanoi, September 9th, 2024

Do Tuong Linh       

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