Opening: Sat 13 Dec 2014, 6 pm
Exhibition: 13 Dec 2014 – 13 Jan 2015
Art Vietnam Gallery
From Art Vietnam Gallery:
20 years of celebration of art and life in Vietnam – Artist Nguyen Cam and Art Vietnam Gallerist Suzanne Lecht mark an honoring of the past, an embracing of the present and a look to the future.
One a stranger in his homeland, one a stranger in a land of strangers, Nguyen Cam and Suzanne Lecht are celebrating 20 years of art and life in Vietnam, each possessing a rich memory full of longing for a life lost and a well of happiness for a life regained.
Nguyen Cam 20 Year Retrospective Imprints of Origin 2014
Born in Haiphong in 1944 Nguyen Cam returned to Vietnam in 1994 after being exiled with his family in 1954. A period of living in Laos, raising singularly his 5 siblings at the tender age of 17 was followed by a move to Paris in 1969. An autodidact, Cam had opened a gallery in Vientiane and had some local repute as an artist of talent and passion. Fueled with ambition and dreams, Cam moved to Paris to enroll in the Ecole des Beaux Arts to verify perhaps to himself alone that he was in truth a “real artist.”
In 1994, a tribute to Cam as an artist and as a man, the Vietnamese government invited Cam to come back to his country to exhibit and to teach at the national fine art universities. Reunited with his homeland after a 50 year absence was a powerful, moving experience for the seasoned artist. His memories of Vietnam were those of a child, an innocent trapped in the turmoil of his country with forces beyond his control. Moving through the halls of memory, traces of the past began to appear in his work. Old used rice sacks, votive paper offerings, small patches of silver leaf applied lovingly as one might adorn a Buddhist sculpture, began to emerge in his work. Fragments of the past and a reverence for the present appeared as adornments marking his reconciliation with his history and with his heart.
A freedom hard won emerged, walls collapsed and the alluvial soil ebbed and flowed as the wellspring of his hopes and joys were finally released from the stricture of time.
The works became a progression of free canvas tarpaulins covered with torn rice sacks; Roots, Traces of the Past 1997, slashes of injury held together by a thread of hope, dangling ropes of tenuous connection emphasizing a man struggling to mend the fractures of his soul, Against Wind and Tide 1999. Slowly the works evolved into more peaceful ruminations of his past and the life surrounding him, a reconciliation with memory. More joyous works appeared, Memory of Spring 1999 depicting rays of light and hope, a flow of energy renewed and a feeling of calm and peace began to prevail, Music of Infinity 2004. A sense of the wonder of the world, our small place in it and the transient nature of life sprung forth onto the canvases as the artist eased into the autumn years of his life, The Milky Way 2004.
For the last 20 years Cam has been coming to Vietnam to paint, exhibit and to visit with friends and family, restoring ties to his homeland and memory. His current works show a man at peace in the world with a renewed energy to express the majesty of life with all its joys and sorrows.
His recent paintings, Beginning of Winter 2012, Ginkgo Sun 2012, Imprints 5 2011, Summer Sun 2012 are all joyous works full of wonder and life, a life reconciled. The artist and man has returned to himself and is at one with the world.
The 20 Year Anniversary of Suzanne Lecht in Vietnam, her journey discovering the heart of the hidden world of contemporary art in Vietnam
Suzanne Lecht, an American, widowed at the age of 44, left her past and sorrow tying her to Tokyo and in 1994 was compelled to move to Vietnam, a mysterious land with a tragic past entwined with her own. A Cathay Pacific in flight magazine with its images of the works of the pioneering group of artists, the “Gang of Five”, captured her heart and a decision was made. She would create her new life in this enigmatic, mysterious country with the hopes of becoming a small bridge of reconciliation between the two countries bound by the beauty of the spirit, not by the devastation of war.
A chance encounter on her very first day in Hanoi led her to the studio of Pham Quang Vinh, one of the Gang of Five. A deep friendship ensued as Suzanne began immersing herself in the arts and culture of Vietnam. In 1997 Suzanne met Nguyen Cam at the Nam Son Gallery where she purchased one of the first major works of her collection, Roots, Traces of the Past 1997. Cam and Suzanne’s friendship flourished as they both were immersing themselves in a land at once familiar and at the same time alien, each healing the wounds of the past.
In 1998 Suzanne exhibited Cam in a solo exhibition at the Arts of Pacific Asia in New York City and many years of presenting his work internationally followed in Paris, San Francisco, Sante Fe, Art Asia New York, Art Asia Miami, and a special solo exhibition in 2003 at the Robert Mondavi Winery in celebration of Robert Mondavi’s 90th birthday.
In 2005 Suzanne opened the Fielding Lecht Gallery in Austin, Texas with the solo exhibition of Nguyen Cam. A deep friendship has been forged over the years bound by the appreciation of the beauty and the power of art to transform and to reconcile with history.
2014 marks Suzanne Lecht’s 20th year of living and working in Vietnam, a journey of self discovery, of deep appreciation of a culture not her own, but one adopted by her heart.
Please come to celebrate this wonderful occasion honoring life, beauty, art and lives well lived.
