The event was curated by researcher Vu Huy Thong, sculptor Dao Chau Hai provided artistic advice, and photos in the exhibition were taken by Harry Nguyen. It is expected that 31 paintings and sculptures will be on display.
Born in Hanoi, moved to Ho Chi Minh City to start a business and was quite successful in business, in the past 5 years Dinh Phong has devoted almost all of his time to composing. The two private spaces in Ho Chi Minh City and the old Tien Giang currently store hundreds of works with many complex materials, requiring a lot of effort, technique and cost. For him, creativity is mainly self-study, self-training through the journey of watching, reading, exchanging and observing artists before him.
Dinh Phong said he came to art from "an inner urge", working in the present, not having many plans. He did not explain, and rarely named the painting because he thought it was an imposition of feelings. "Seeing this today, tomorrow it will be different, I want viewers to be free to think".
In the previous 3 exhibitions, Dinh Phong mainly used acrylic paint on the canvas with an abstract body system evoking dreams. This time, he expanded his practice by replacing popular painting materials with copper, stainless steel, metal grids, copper leaves for corrosive acid, paint coating, heating, grinding, sewing, collagen, combined with collage techniques. The gray color, green rust, metallic fields and dark black blocks create a surface that feels ancient, reminiscent of time, destruction and regeneration.
Sculptor Dao Chau Hai believes that Dinh Phong creates mainly according to personal feelings, little metaphor for form or theory but expresses strong emotions - something that not everyone has. He assessed that the gradual shift from acrylic to metal shows tiem nangity, encouraging artists to maintain continuous practice, not depending on the mold.
Researcher Vu Huy Thong commented that this exhibition shows a step of "de-aloneization" in Dinh Phong's painting practice: painting is not only painting on flat surfaces but also interacting with materials, light and space. The bulky steel plates, thoy stainless steel nets, and eroded copper plates not only create visual effects but also evoke the idea of material and human identity before time.
From the perspective of researcher Quach Cuong, Dinh Phong's paintings and statues both aim at the interplay between humans and the universe. People are not present directly but are the flow of energy, movement, emptiness and light. There, the creative journey is not a process of "flattening the rose carpet" but a process of dialogue, facing oneself.
