Dogma Prize 2019: Encounter: Prize winner: Giang Nguyễn

The Dogma Prize and Galerie Quynh are pleased to present Encounter, a group showcase of fourteen artists applying various media to self-portraiture: paintings, sculptures, installations to video art, short film and animation. The Encounter seeks to reveal the deeper layers of personal stories and self-inquiries. As an artistic expression, these self-portrayal works shall constitute a call for the spectators to observe and explore the selves that are concealed beneath the oftentimes-disguised façade. 

In order for the artists to uncover, understand and give insights to his/her personal identity and inner world, the Encounter attempts to set a stage where the artists, as individual subjects, observe personal and deep-rooted inner objects through the mean of reflection, bringing forth a multitude of duality and unavoidable opposites of interior and exterior reality, of instincts and sensuality. As outcomes, the artworks show tensions between destruction and growth, as in the case of Iggy Dang’s piece, exposure and hiding in Dang Viet Linh’s painting, societal discipline and freedom in Tran Quoc Giang’s found objects, or rationality and emotions in Pham Hong’s soft sculpture.

The Encounter also witnesses a meeting between the artist and the reality of which he has to cope with, a condition that enables Giang Nguyen’s conceptual piece to open up and pose questions to the external world, the advance of technology into our future in particular, to create a unique meaning. Through his piece, visions can be seen and voices can be heard.

In Truong Minh Quy’s documentary style short film, he searches to define his own identity amidst an extended, larger realm of collective memories, that which crosses borders both geographically and psychologically.

When confronted with their own realities, painters Nguyen Van Bay, Nguyen Minh Chau, Nguyen Tan Phat and Vu Ngoc Vinh chose an existential angle – that is individualism versus conformity and the daily struggle of being an artist as part of an immediate family, of a societal rigour, or mortal survival amidst the turning of nature’s course. On the other side of the material spectrum, Vu Quang works with different medium – hard cast aluminium, but with a softened approach to craft his personal rationale on metaphysical existence.

As if speaking from the perspective of a younger generation, Phan Hoai Nhi and Pham Nguyen Anh Tu use newer media, animation and video art as a language of art to unravel their mental content – inner thoughts, emotions and experiences of millennial city dwellers in the rat race of urbanisation and the omnipresent information age. 

It is worthy to notice a spectrum in the choices of medium, tone, form and technique among all the artists. Ultimately, this is a process in which the Encounter invites the artists to merge and unify the different parts, leading to an intergenerational pondering on the revelation of the self. In recognising an effort from younger artists to move away from the traditional application of self-portraiture vis-à-vis painting, one should also consider the fact that artistic expression on canvas is indeed still a prevalent practice in the country. Hence, the resulting showcase aspires to present a current landscape in which Vietnamese artists from all walks of life celebrate the spirit of creating self-portraiture.

At the other end of the gaze, the spectators are encourages to pose as equal in a capability of inventing their own translations. Free and unattached to any biased or privileged artistic medium, it would invite all to appropriate works for themselves and make use of these in ways that their artists might never have imagined…

in this Encounter.