Shit Lacquer Paintings

This week I visited the HCMC Fine Arts Museum to see Khai Doan‘s ‘Dipolar’ exhibition. The Vietnamese artist, who is fun to talk to, has lived in Germany for over 10 years and has a Western perspective on the content of an artwork. We both agree that locally, art seems to be perceived as a decorative object that should be seen but not be heard. The challenges of exhibiting work that is only ever so slightly different from the norm, I infer from Khai’s comments, are not insignificant. Khai Doan’s work is not blatantly controversy-seeking, however, some ideas, now unoriginal in Western metropoles, still rock the boat in Vietnam.

The first room of the show features 3 lacquer paintings that took 5 years to make (The painstaking lacquer technique -developed in Japan and China to make durable furniture and crafts- was first used in Vietnam to create paintings with). These ‘son mai’ works are taken down daily and gently sanded in the same way as they are during the creation process, to make them smooth. At this stage, however, the sanding is actually done with the intention of destroying the images. The lacquer coats erode each day, revealing previous layers. This type of action appears nonsensical to many here, who would be just as baffled (rightly so?) to hear of Rauschenberg’s ‘Erased De Kooning Drawing’ from 1953. Interesting to think of the wastefulness of ‘damaging’ art, in the context of a burgeoning capitalist society in Asia, and of the not-so-green-carbon-wasting-West. Another way to disrupt the traditional way of creating lacquer paintings is to employ digitally produced designs. Mother-of-pear inlay takes on a new form. My favourite work was the world map below, with myriad connections in gold crossing oceans. I can relate to that!

For a show that makes constant references to duplicity and contradictions, there’s a lot of tryptichs! The final room has two, the last one illustrating 3 enormous poos – with much less elegance than Piero Manzoni. Young members of the audience did find it amusing, though. The next generation is not expecting art to be too serious – but the gold inlay surely adds kudos. Wealth is good. Background colour revealing.

#Lacquer #Painting #Saigon