Mother Earth: Christine Jean’s paintings depict the relationship between nature and human beings. VNS Photo Bạch Liên

Viet Nam News

HÀ NỘI — An exhibition that has opened in Hà Nội presents art from Vietnamese-French artist Trần Trọng Vũ and 15 paintings by French artist Christine Jean.

The works from Vũ highly impressed the public at the show. Taking up a large part of the exhibition room in the French cultural centre, it features more than four hundred flowers and foliage manufactured in brightly coloured plastic.

The flowers have poetry written on their petals that are readable.

The installation features a unique intertwining of words and images, with the words suggesting images as much as the pictures suggest words.

Vũ said that he wanted to explore the relationship between the inside and the outside of humans through the installation.

“I want to create contrast. In each person, each society, there are contradictions. Many are afraid of them. But I believe that those contradictions help everyone grow up, and help things to move and develop,” he said.

Fifteen paintings from French artist Christine Jean are also being exhibited at the centre.

Jean does not seek to produce simple images but establish a relationship of human beings with nature.

For her, to paint is to understand the development processes of nature: growth, decomposition, and transformation. In her paintings, flowers appear and disappear.

From those landscapes of nature, emerge the artist’s memories of childhood.

“The movements of nature are the centre of my work, the fluidity of water, clouds movements, tremors of the earth. A long stay in Việt Nam in 1994, followed by other trips in this country and the trips in Japan more recently, had a durable influence on the orientations of my research in my career,” she said.

Winner of the prestigious Jean-Francois Millet award, her works have been displayed worldwide.

The exhibition is entitled “The Meeting Point”, referring to the meeting between paintings and installation (visual and non-visual art), and to the recent photo of a flower garden in Hà Nội the two artists saw.

“This photo of the flowers was the starting point for this exhibition,” said Vũ

Born in Hà Nội, Vũ is a renowned plastic artist in France where he has worked and lived for more than 20 years.

In 1987, he graduated from the Fine Arts College of Hà Nội where he became a teacher.

In 1989, he got a scholarship to study at the National Fine Arts College of Paris. In 2012, he won the Pollock-Knasner prize, which awards outstanding plastic artists worldwide.

The exhibition runs until June 5 at L’Espace, the French cultural centre, located at 24 Tràng Tiền Street, Hà Nội. — VNS

 

Words and images: A woman reads verses written on the plastic flower petals of Trần Trọng Vũ’s installation. VNS Photo Bạch Liên