Dinh Cong Dat - Creative mystery

The famous toy company Lego also had to admit defeat to Dat because his tiny wooden horse cost only 2,000 USD. Sculptures - which were originally envisioned as grand monuments - now in his hands are just toys...

Dinh Cong Dat sat down on a low chair in the painting studio outside Tan Ap dike, Hanoi . He put the lacquer box on his lap, while painting, he spoke in a warm and loud voice. His hands were not as big as his voice but very "mason" - sometimes he spread all five fingers like a fan and wiped them hard on his trouser leg. Not only masons, many craftsmen also had the same habit. And Dat - was "the sum of craftsman relationships". He studied pottery with artisans from Phu Lang village, studied lacquer in Chuong My, then learned to make leather and bronze products only in famous craft villages. "Studying like that is better than studying at the Fine Arts School", Dat "said" firmly.

“I just find the free theme suitable”

Dinh Cong Dat - Photo: Tuan Dao

At the Fine Arts School, Dat twice left a contrasting mark. He entered as valedictorian, and graduated as last in line. Sculpture training at the school “twisted” the artist’s thinking towards monuments. But the massiveness and the monotonous memorial thinking were foreign to him. Dat became different from everyone else in the class. “I only found the free-form theme suitable,” said the now-famous sculptor.

	Still the same since the day he fell in love with sculpture, Dat is an unknown quantity always waiting to explode to create a universe of toys in his creations!

Freedom for Dat is to transform into one creature after another in his creations. So free that Dat cannot announce a specific number, but he is sure that the crab he carved does not have eight legs and two claws. The other animals that Dat portrayed during his years of studying fine arts are all similar. They are completely different from the usual image of animals because they always add or subtract some highlights. But that addition and subtraction is not innocent in the folk spirit. In fact, Dat's animals are closer to the carefully described creatures that artists create for science fiction or disaster films. Those creatures are ants but not ants, spiders but not spiders... So even though he turns his back on "reptile" realism, Dat's works still have spirit in the refinement of every detail. From that refinement, it is clear that he is too aesthetic - more simple than fastidious. So difficult that, right from the beginning, Dat's beautiful sculpted ants had a place in the house of painter Le Thiet Cuong - a man with a notoriously refined aesthetic taste. Entering Cuong's "den", the work could not be too detailed because Cuong loved minimalism. It could not be simple and sloppy because Cuong was so meticulous that even a fly flying by would know which one loved oil painting, which one loved silk painting... Yet Dat's ants had a place of honor in Cuong's house, so that the guests who came and went could always see clearly and admire them.

Some chickens were "stolen"

In Dat's workshop, the "skeletons" of ants and bees waiting for customers to order, then be polished and shipped, are hung along the high wall. Customers who come to see the products sit on a wooden horse as low as a small chair. Dat told a "skinny" customer of about eighty kilos: "Don't worry, because it's made for children to play with, the carpenters have calculated very carefully. No matter how you sit, the horse will be comfortable and very stable." Not only the carpenters calculate carefully, Dat's horse is also made thanks to the calculations of all kinds of workers. The leather worker calculates so that the reins fit close to the body without stretching or cracking due to shrinkage. The iron worker puts in nails. The coconut fiber worker... "2,000 USD per horse, only made and sold after orders are placed."

The column “Creation for Vietnamese Aspiration” introduces portraits of Trung Nguyen friends, regardless of age, background, domestic or foreign… They are people who are tirelessly creating day and night in their professional fields, contributing their brains and energy, spreading the flame of aspiration, inspiring Vietnamese youth, arousing the desire to compete with the world , devoting themselves and creating for a powerful Vietnam.

One-of-a-kind horses were sold at that price, but Dat also had no chickens to sell cheaply. Remember the exhibition “Chickens: chip, chic, chicky” at the Goethe Institute, he displayed a large flock of 150 children and grandchildren. The plaster skeletons were covered with newspaper, then named and decorated. Anyone who came to the exhibition and wanted to create their own creations was guided on-site. The number of days the exhibition lasted was the same as the number of days when children crawled on the floor to play all morning and all afternoon. Sculpture for children - for a long time - since the construction of Lenin Park - in Hanoi, no one had organized it, and even let them participate... Dat officially overturned a dominant spirit of sculpture in the country, with the encouragement of children like that.

By the end of the day, there were still people registering to buy. The money collected was only short of a few "stolen" chickens. Dat said that later, from those stolen chickens, people multiplied many other chicken models. Still using Dat's technology after the chickens were pecked to reveal their bones and skin. The shop that stole the model sold this toy grandly in a large building. Dat knew everything, got a few angry words and then buried his head back into making other toy models.

Now, his professional life is working on orders day after day. He is famous for his style of "if you don't do it, then don't do it, but if you do it, it's always very expensive". However, he still has emotional blocks specially made for children's emotions and children's toys. Therefore, in the expensive orders, there are still medium-priced orders. For those orders, Dat collects full payment for raw materials and full labor, but his supervision and creativity are almost free.

In the sculpture game, Dat is as strong as water gushing from a high-powered pump, sweeping everyone to the land of children's imagination. There, there is no object that is not fully imagined and still cannot be completely similar to real life. He goes there and eagerly carves out new sculpture characters for children. His professionalism makes those characters always lively, and always in a state of "waiting to steal the model". It has been like that since the day he started sculpture, Dat is an unknown quantity always waiting to explode to create a universe of toys in creation!

Trinh Nguyen

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Source: https://thanhnien.vn/dinh-cong-dat-an-so-sang-tao-18548957.htm