Poetry of the Motherland

About

Poetry of the Motherland opens on Thursday 17th June 2010 at Apricot Gallery, London and will introduce iconic works from two of the leading contemporary Vietnamese artists, Tran Luu Hau and Hoang Duc Dung. This exhibition offers a new experience for collectors and a regeneration of the London Art Market, opening its borders to a lesser known school of art which is fast growing in popularity within the Asian market. Tran Luu Hau, at 82 years old, is one of the fathers of Vietnamese Contemporary art and was a student at the Viet Bac Fine Arts School during the war. He went on to teach for twenty-eight years at the Hanoi School of Fine Arts. In 1990, Hau was appointed Chairman of the Art Council of the Vietnam Fine Arts Association, a post he held until 2000. Unusually for a Vietnamese artist he has travelled widely throughout his career. He studied art and theatre design in Moscow for six years and is fully conversant with European and American art. In 1990 he spent two months in Paris which culminated in an exhibition at Vietnam House. His work expresses his emotions in its ‘subjective deformation of nature'. Hoang Duc Dung is one of the youngest Vietnamese artists on the international art scene yet one of the most talented. Dung gained a Master of Arts degree in 2009 from the prestigious Vietnam University of Fine Arts, where he is now a lecturer. Dung's monochromatic canvases are striking and powerful, often displaying a very sensitive application of colour. Dung says that each colour has its own 'voice', for instance red is the colour of light and fire, conveying strength, prosperity, luck and happiness, whereas blue denotes coolness and mystery. The artist's delicate brushwork is so meticulous, that forms emerge indefinitely from the background, creating a haze of serenity.