Opening: Fri 10 Oct 2014, 2 pm
Exhibition: 10 Oct – 04 Nov 2014
Manzi Art Space
From Manzi:
Exhibition New Form II
Artists: Phạm Thái Bình, Thái Nhật Minh, Khổng Đỗ Tuyền, Hoàng Mai Thiệp
Curator: Nguyễn Anh Tuấn
Manzi Art Space and New Form sculpture group cordially presents a piece of experimental sculpture named “New Form: Sculpture – Architecture – Space”. The exhibition is an activity in New Form project phase II, 2014 – 2015.
NEW FORM is an experimental sculpture project, which aims to overcome stereotypes of traditional sculpture and to open up new directions in thinking and creative possibilities of this art form. NEW FORM was founded by sculptors living and working in Hanoi with the desire to develop their career and to find new creative directions as well as experience a professional working environment.
In phase II, New Form project aims towards the connection of sculpture works with architectural living space in reality. The dialogue characteristics between the artworks are placed in the communicative ability with architecture, interior, and usage of that space. This dialogue has created special challenges when sculptures aren’t just dealing with its traditional inner relation such as shapes, materials, surfaces, colours, and aesthetics… but also with the correlation between sculpture and architectural space in the shape and function. This has to do with the environment, light, air, time, weather, the available context, and the changeable context as well as with the viewers’ behaviours and attitude to arts. When art isn’t just purely for the visual satisfying display, art has transformed into an intervention, intrusion and being parallel with movements, feelings, psychologies in everyday life activities. Sculpture, therefore, needs to be more active in their presence in the chosen space, how to integrate into that space as well as the on-going challenges because of the living space’s continuous operational characteristics. It isn’t simply just a traditional static fixed dead space.
The works of Thai Nhat Minh is a sculpture experiments with its role to connect the current space with the concept. Minh tries to find the connection between the inner and outer space, interior and exterior space by implementing at the gallery’s windows. The sculptural shapes were pressed flat and shown in a reflective material. The space in and outside interfered through the gaps of the window frames creating a visible visual connection for the audience. The artist wants to use this dialogue to open suggestions and questions about space and the space connection between inside and outside, between the reflective illusion reality, between the limited physical space and the imaginative conceptual space.
The showcase of Pham Thai Binh took inspiration form the strong influence of architecture and modern design language to sculpture. Leaving the sculptures based on fixed forms, the works of Binh has developed towards site-specific installations and modularity. The leaf-formed-pieces are arranged from the main wall of the fireplace to the gallery ceiling. It aims to explore flexibility and diversity ability in the combination of sculpture and architecture. This actually exists inside the sculpture itself.
Khong Do Tuyen continues to deploy the art direction of combining the rope structure from phase I. Following this way; he uses the ropes to create the structure of the space. Tuyen uses the walls, windows and the entire gallery ceiling as the space for sculpture. The artist’s experiment expanded the sculpture possibility. It isn’t just integrating but also changing the architecture space and also shows the connection between architecture space and sculpture space can be a unified piece. This new language surely has the influence from the modern architecture structure, industrial design but sill keeps the vibe spirit of traditional creative sculpture.
Sculptor Hoang Mai Thiep shows a piece of sculpture combining with site-specific installation. Having the inspiration from the family tree – the popular family genealogy in rural life, Thiep uses the wooden blocks in many different sizes to mount on the large walls of the room. The blocks are arranged in an alternative and overlapping way beside the portrait reliefs of the rural men and women or just empty reliefs. The conceptual elements of the work is expressed through the installation of the blocks in a random way, the empty and solid of each block, as well as the ambition to show the complex content through the sculpture language. And it also wants to embrace the connection ability of sculpture and other architectural spaces. `
The participation of Pham Dam Ca brought graphical solution for the showcase of the sculptures. They aren’t just present with the auxiliary function for the sculptures. The graphic language of Dam Ca goes along with the works in the spirit of a specialized graphic solution for the art exhibition, which continued to develop from New Form exhibition I (2013). The shapes-arrays-lines, which were expressed in the logo of the project in phase I, are now dissected to intentionally independent fragmented segments and pieces. This is a concise expression in visual and graphic language in parallel to the development of sculpture form and space.
To understand in a simple way, architecture is a work of creating spaces to serve the function of human lives. However, architecture isn’t just the physical space with the divided spaces of specific function. That is also the structure of human lives such as space structure, thinking structure, relationship structure or aesthetic structure. When sculpture starts to find a way to intervene, intrude in that space, it is not only the process of seeking and adapting with architecture but it has the ability to shift, change or even redefine architecture spaces by its visual elements and time concept. When architecture has oriented more and more to the universality in public space, uniqueness in small and medium spaces with its own meanings, sculpture also needs to shift and change to bring out the suggestions. That is the objective of New Form project and the spirit of this exhibition.
This event is made possible with the generous support from Danish Cultural Development and Exchange Fund in Vietnam (CDEF).
Source internet
