Trung Son 'Between Form and Emptiness'

Artist Trung Son (real name Ngo Tran Vu) has just opened the art exhibition 'Between Color and Emptiness' at the Vietnam Fine Arts Museum (running until January 10th), showcasing more than 30 paintings of young women wearing traditional Vietnamese five-panel dresses and ao dai.

The works were created over a period of eight years, drawing on his experience of studying and painting models directly, using a unique wet-on-wet oil painting technique.

Looking at Trung Son's paintings, one can faintly see lines from Kiet Tan's poetry: "You return from the bamboo lane / Carrying in your hand the sunlight of spring blossoms / Gently walking like a jade lotus / Your hair flowing softly in the fragrance of longing." The viewer sometimes steps from the tangible to the intangible – or vice versa – as if silently passing through an empty door, from the shore of reality to the shore of dreams, and then from the shore of dreams back to the shore of reality.

A work of art at the exhibition.

PHOTO: JACKFRUIT TEA

Curator and art critic Ngo Kim Khoi commented: "The characters in Trung Son's paintings always convey a sense of fragility: beautiful yet ephemeral, present but not clinging, as if they only exist for the moment we are looking at them, then dissolve into the colors. The girls are present yet seem to vanish. The colors are vibrant yet seem to recede into the background. These two states intertwine, creating a feeling of gentle tension, like a breath held back. A kind of beauty that needs no permission, no ostentation. A kind of beauty that goes straight to the viewer's heart because there is nothing to hide."

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/trung-son-giua-sac-va-khong-185260105103605768.htm