Artist keeps silence to feel nature

One by one: Four Seasons, the painting by Vu Dinh Tuan

As nature is best appreciated when we are quiet, he has asked people to keep silent as they look at his work.

Tuan’s solo exhibition opened this weekend in Hanoi with the title “Silent, Flowers Are Blooming”.

This exhibition presents a collection of 21 silk paintings created by Tuan last year. With his distinctive style, Tuan has charmingly contributed to the art of silk painting in the Vietnamese contemporary art scene in the last decade, remarked painter Le Anh Van, head of the Vietnam University of Fine Arts.

“Tuan’s delicate silk works transfix us with his use of vibrant colours and a myriad of unexpected details,” he said.

“His stylised faces rendered with contrasting animate and inanimate objects verge on surrealism, although his paintings are not easily categorised since his work is truly unique.”

“Unlike oil or acrylic paintings that can be modified with additional layering, painting on silk is a meticulous process that requires perfect control and painstaking accuracy.”

“Tuan demonstrated the highest technique in silk paintings. The brilliant nature in his paintings inspired our imagination.”

Talking about his artwork, Tuan said simply that he realised that only when we keep silent, we can better experience nature.

“Just with silence, we can feel the flower’s blossom, the breath of the insects and movement of clouds. The life is wonderful and miraculous.”

Tuan was born in 1973 in Hanoi. He studied fine arts in Vietnam and printmaking in Portland, Maine. He is currently a lecturer in the Printmaking Department at the Vietnam University of Fine Arts as well as being a member of the Hanoi Fine Arts Association and the Vietnam Fine Arts Association.

The artist has exhibited widely in Vietnam and abroad in New York, Sweden, Japan, Bangladesh, Romania and Cambodia. He has received numerous awards and prizes over the last 10 years and enjoys a significant following in New York and around the world. He is regarded as one of the finest Vietnamese contemporary silk artists.

The exhibition will run until January 28 at the Hanoi Studio Gallery, 13 Trang Tien Street, Hanoi.