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Travel through time: An untitled painting by Nguyen Quang Thang, one of many calligraphic artworks displayed at the exhibition. — Photo courtesy of Art Viet Nam Gallery. |
HA NOI — Zenei is a group of five, young avant-garde calligraphers who are forging a new path. The Zenei group are elevating both art and history to a new level of experience.
Nom, the demotic script of Viet Nam, was once the means with which Vietnamese literature, philosophy and country records were transcribed and it has nearly been forgotten. Today, there is only a small number of people who are able to both read and write Nom. However, five young scholars, who are able to read and write in this now unfamiliar script, have banded together to create Zenei. The Zenei group is actively carrying the Nom script forward from its place in history into modernity.
"By composing and decomposing, creating and reinventing, the Zenei group is creating a living, visual experience that has a indiscernible form, sound and meaning," Suzanne Lecht, Art Director of Art Viet Nam Gallery, said.
"Each of the five artists in Zenei have their own unique way of relating to Nom in order to make it live again," she said.
To Tran Trong Duong, the important thing is the spirit of the character not its literal translation. Using a brush to transcribe the character, he preserves the spiritual root of the word, but all traces of the character's original meaning have evaporated.
Nguyen Quang Thang writes solely in Nom characters. He writes sentences in Vietnamese and thinks about the content before he starts to paint, but once he starts his mind is free of linguistic constraints. Like a man following a running stream, Thang treasures each character's intrinsic beauty.
Pham Van Tuan has three large works in this exhibition. Tuan concentrates on illuminating the relationship between black and white. "I'm weak in my body, but when I write it is very strong. I work against my body," he says. His energy comes from God and a belief that a strong mind can lead to a strong stroke.
In this installation Le Quoc Viet uses Chinese Han, the language from which Nom was derived, however Nom and Han are linguistically related but not identical.
In Viet's installation, he uses ceramic plates and balls that have characters painted on them. This work can move and make sounds. The balls are placed on mirrors, which are in constant movement. When the balls move, the reflection creates thousands of images, which then makes a new modern language.
Nguyen Duc Dung concentrates on making each stroke. "By focusing on the character's movement between light and dark, I pursue a primal understanding of the balance struck between the two colours, which is a balance between meaning and non-meaning," he says. "All our artworks are the result of our excursion into the scripts."
"The five young artists are well-versed, passionate and well-educated in Han, Nom and calligraphy. They use ancient and ‘challenging' pseudonyms," says critic Nguyen Quan.
"The five artists here play with letters, they create them and transform and analyse the structure of the scripts."
Zenei's artworks are on display at the Art Viet Nam Gallery, 7 Nguyen Khac Nhu Street, Ha Noi, until March 3. — VNS