Painter Vo Trinh Bien (Da Lat City, Lam Dong Province) has taken the 264 Chinese characters in the Heart Sutra out of the realm of ordinary language and into a colorful block of artistic strokes.
 |
| Cover of the book Heart Sutra by artist Vo Trinh Bien |
The first element that makes this unique is that he did not write but used Chinese ink to redraw all 264 Chinese characters from the Chinese version of the Heart Sutra on large cardboard. Each Chinese character, through the way artist Vo Trinh Bien creates shapes with his fingertips, is an insight, an inspiration, a call for resonance, and also an interpretation of color blocks, shapes, and composition. Each curved and straight line on each Chinese character unit is a unique set of characters. Each vertical and horizontal stroke of each Chinese character is a creative and aesthetic expression.
Another unique point is that he broke the previous prejudice: letters are only used for one purpose - writing! Calligraphy, why not? So artist Vo Trinh Bien chose images of bamboo trunks to create Chinese characters in 3D space, placed on a background color that enhances the letters as the image of bamboo trunks that are as vivid as real life. He is very delicate in finding methods to express the background color: sometimes he creates the shape of the bamboo trunks in a flat horizontal way, sometimes he creates the shape of the bamboo trunks in a vertical form, sometimes with bold diagonal strokes, sometimes he creates the shape of the bamboo trunks in a full-cut interwoven style, on the one hand, to highlight the blocks of letters that are the shapes of bamboo trunks, on the other hand, to create flexible light and dark effects to highlight the flexibility and softness of each letter structure. Through the language of color and lines, artist Vo Trinh Bien depicts all the beauty of the shape in each letter, expressed through the image of bamboo. Through his painting language, the image of bamboo once again rises to the highest position, symbolizing the character of the Vietnamese people. Of course, painter Vo Trinh Bien does not forget the function of words to convey Buddhist content.
Talented in rational contemplation, meticulous in choosing the way of expression, each Chinese character in the Heart Sutra that he drew is a true work of art: structure, color, space, thought. All those characters with the image of bamboo, artist Vo Trinh Bien has gathered and bound into a 50-page book. In addition to the Chinese part drawn with the image of bamboo, he also wrote additional Vietnamese and English parts to support those who cannot read Chinese characters to read the Heart Sutra through the Vietnamese and English parts, then compare it with the Chinese characters in the front. This book, 110 cm long, 80 cm wide, 10 cm high, includes 3 languages: Chinese, Vietnamese and English.
By choosing Chinese characters as an aesthetic point of view, consciously or unconsciously, artist Vo Trinh Bien has created a meeting between Buddhist philosophy (Heart Sutra) and Vietnamese national identity (the symbol of bamboo). In other words, he has created a correlation from his own unique point of view, turning philosophical characters into unique artistic structures. Calligraphy - a unique identity of artist Vo Trinh Bien.
Source
Comment (0)