“FORMS OF PRESENCE"
Contemporary Vietnamese painting × Japanese antiques: An open dialogue
Exploring the connection between memory, material, and emotion in form and object, “Forms of Presence” brings Vietnamese contemporary painting into quiet dialogue with Imari ceramics and ritual bronzes from the Land of the Rising Sun. The exhibition unfolds across three intertwined realms: the layered presence of nature, the meditative, and the everyday. In each of these, five Vietnamese contemporary artists – Đoàn Xuân Tặng, Nguyễn Thế Hùng, Khổng Đỗ Duy, Đoàn Văn Tới, and Mifa – enter into quiet conversation with Japanese antiques from a contemporary perspective.
Though separated by centuries, all the works in this exhibition treat surface – whether ceramic, bronze, silk, canvas, vóc, or Điệp paper – not as mere material, not simply decorative or abstract, but as vessels of emotion, thought and layered narratives. These surfaces remember. They vibrate. They speak, like storytellers guiding us across time.
Each artist works with a distinct material and sensibility: the co-existence of the mythic and the mountainous in Đoàn Xuân Tặng’s meditations on tradition and modernization; the multilayered cultural motifs embedded in Nguyễn Thế Hùng’s hybrid forms; the quietly symbolic domestic interiors of Khổng Đỗ Duy; the interbeing of all things (where one holds the other) in Đoàn Văn Tới’s contemplative gestures; and the emotional resonance of nature, poetic traces of cultural memory, and inner turbulence in Mifa’s expressive abstractions. Across these varied approaches runs a shared concern with presence, not only of image or object, but of spirit.
Paired with Japanese antiques from gilded ceramics to sacred bronzes which have long carried their own silent narratives, whispering of daily life, spiritual reflection, and the generative power of nature, the exhibition invites an open dialogue not only between two cultures, but across emotions, traditions, and the unknowns of time.
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“FORMS OF PRESENCE”
Time: 15.06 - 15.07.2025 (9:30AM - 6:30PM)
Venue: Penthouse 2301, The Vista, 628C Vo Nguyen Giap, D2, HCMC