etchings of Hà Nội and Hội An

Rain on Lo River

Trần Nguyên Hiếu

artist whose artwork my siblings and i discovered in the piles of original-prints-for-sale at the Museum of Fine Arts gift shop. he is one of the only artists in VN to employ the aesthetic and method of etching. we all loved it, dropped down most of our spending money (in dollars!) and got prints. according to his artist statement:

In this works, cold and desultory lines alone, like strands of hair, when knit together become a refine and velvety carpet woven into a poetic, profound and harmonious image. The hands of the etching-artist are the meticulous hands of a jeweller in work which would stifle vibrant artistic feelings. Nevertheless, the ancient streets of Hanoi and Hoi An and the age-old trees in the countryside of Tran Nguyen Hieu have brought us to an aesthetic ecstasy and to an everlasting dissolution.

i'm not sure about the dissolution or ecstasy part--though in his naked lady/japan erotica series (warning NSFW!) certainly i believe the O-word may be apropos. but in his architectural city-/land-scapes, i think what captured my eye is the (post)modern obsession with capturing details photographically, the asymmetric/skewed perspectives (without being all picasso), element of timeless nostalgia/historic weightiness, the juxtaposition of ghostly negative images with a suspended present, the multiplicity of historic/cultural moments that comprise the timeless present and the alienating indifference of the etching method in gothic gangrenous washes from generations of monsoons and humidity.

though we all bought the "warmer" digestable HN cityscape prints, i find the more conceptual pieces intriguing. like the Lo River print above of a fishing village on the a vast river, the dual perspective of off-center bird's-eye-view and the vertical rain is disconcerting, vertiginous enough that it's hard to find one's ground. on a cognitive, visual processing level, i float above the scene. there's a melancholy tone to it and it puts me in mind of the vinamese fisherfolk moored in the Gulf off of Biloxi lost to the ocean's swells during Hurricane Katrina.

we did not see any prints that were this vivid in color (and somehow it doesn't seem right), this is a contemporary snapshot of a street and in the borders around it (click on the photo for enlargement), you can see the faint etchings of historical memory that haunt this lane.





O Quan Chuong Street