The wax sculptures by La Huy

Wonderful surprise to visit HCMC’s Cactus gallery on the closing day of this exhibition, and to find that it is their best exhibition to date. La Huy is a young graduate of the HCMC Fine Arts University who has worked mainly with paint up to now. This show features a small number of paintings, but it’s his sculpture which dominates, and which I find extremely original and interesting. The title ‘Sentimental Zone’ sounds quite despondent. Perhaps it sounds more fitting in the original Vietnamese. In any case, the theme of the show is intimacy and private ‘quiet times’, expressed with images of motherhood, angelic figures and religious books. The artist is a catholic, which explains the angels and the bible, but he also uses Buddhist imagery, perhaps because it is more prevalent in Vietnam than the imagery of other religions.

Grayson Perry’s ceramics, but in La Huy’s work, the drawings, while full of energy and sometimes tinged with aggression, are mellowed by the family figures and the softness of the pliable wax.

#Asia #Saigon #Sculpture #Vietnam