In that context, painting becomes an inner journey, where artists seek freedom amidst the real limits.
The exhibition is structured into three groups of works, each group carrying its own rhythm of contemplation and practice.
Including more than 30 pencil artworks on paper drawn in 2020. This collection of works is the starting point for a series of wandering, drifting, and free thoughts that are not seductive in painting. As Doan Xuan Tung shared: "When drawing, I let my mind be free, and it itself completes the work." Viewers can easily encounter a world that is both innocent and rich in associations. Artist and poet Giang Van expressed sympathy with this series of works: "I like pencil, black and white paintings, with vivid, concise, coherent, and interesting images like folk rhymes. A way of feeling life that is full of poetry and freshness that Doan Xuan Tung persistently pursues amidst the hardships of life.
Initiation. Including more than 30 color works on do and cover. This collection is a continuation of wandering in Doan Xuan Tung's mind, but in a more open space, where social concerns, circumstances and human fates gradually become clear and multi-layered.
The paintings are no longer just vague guided intuition, they are expressed more strongly by lines and colors. The work is not bound by standards of block painting or ordinary composition, they move according to a unique logic of subconscious and emotions. Wandering in the mind allows Doan Xuan Tung to reach every corner of society, overcome all geographical and circumstantial distances and express unlimited human projections. We can see the joys and sorrows of chaos in Mind 23, Mind 21; the ultimate loneliness in Mind 9, Mind 10, Mind 27 or the reunions in the accumulation of Mind 11, Mind 12, the obsession with death and life in the pandemic of Mind 29, Mind 30... See Doan Xuan Tung's paintings at this time as a journey through space and time, through all human roles.
Tho tang. Includes 20 ceramic works made after the pandemic. The transition from sharp paintings to polyhedra on ceramics, allows Doan Xuan Tung to express more diversely his artistic thoughts, and at the same time closes a period of creative thinking with many thoughts and changes. Doan Xuan Tung shared: "I don't want to simply borrow glaze and brushes to create color on basic ceramics, I want to let my hands wander with a purposeless mind when touching the soil and glaze and excitedly wait for my unpredictable works". Pottery with him is not just a material but also a silent dialogue with soil and fire. The spirit of these ceramic works is still free expression, not seduction. We see a peaceful introspection in Drinking tea, Looking at the moon; we see a suppressed one in Secret, Thang may; or a unique fragment in Dragon scale, A dragon piece...
Wandering mind - a surreal wandering in painting by Doan Xuan Tung, a persistent journey to find new and serious things with art.
The exhibition takes place from May 30 to June 8 on the 3rd floor of the Fine Arts Exhibition House 16 Ngo Quyen, Hanoi.
Doan Xuan Tung was born in 1982 in Hung Yen, graduated with a Master's degree from Vietnam National University of Fine Arts in 2016. He has had many individual exhibitions, group exhibitions and has won a number of national art awards. He currently lives and composes professionally in Hanoi.
