One of Nguyen Cam’s paintings
Excerpt from www.thanhniennews.com
A French-trained Vietnamese artist tries to “reinvent time” with his new abstract collection that he calls “calligraphy of the soul.”
Vietnamese French artist Nguyen Cam returned to Vietnam in January to exhibit “The Passage of Time,” 54 new paintings at the Art Vietnam Gallery in Hanoi.
After producing and exhibiting his work around the world for some 35 years, Cam has soaked up artistic traditions from different cultures and now blends them deftly – yet he is always proud to be Vietnamese. “Every time I come back to Hanoi, I feel full of creative energy,” he says. “Hanoi looks young, energetic and dynamic. That liveliness provides an endless source of inspiration for me to create art because I feel absolutely free and creative in my own style without being affected by the western lifestyle or modern art trends.”
Cam says he is inspired by both his own personal experiences here as well as what he knows about the wounds his homeland has suffered. All his paintings are emotional, sometimes wildly so. Often his brush strokes look like devastating storms; sometimes they look peaceful and poetic. “Some paintings have gingko leaves, which represent our desire for something eternal. We can’t hold back time, so we must reinvent it,” Cam said.
Though Cam says “Passage of Time” is “calligraphy for the soul,” the paintings are much more like pictures than the characters of a written language. Though would be hard to argue that Cam’s work is directly related to Chinese or Japanese calligraphy, his phrase does describe his use of symbols to express themes in an impressionistic visual language. His paintings are often infused with outside materials like soil, sand, cardboard, prayer paper, ginko leaves and even Lipton tea sachets.
Cam says that he produces art in two stages. In the first stage, he lets his creativity and imagination guide his brush. Then in the second stage, he uses his experience to rearrange the images and establish harmony throughout the collection. Sometimes Cam works with familiar conventions, other times he reinvents the cliché. In the painting “Tet” he uses red, the traditional color symbolizing happiness and renewal in Asia. In the painting “Space,” he expands on this idea by using an earthen red color made by mixing soil into the paint. The canvas looks like a piece of land ready for farming.
Cam says that when he first returned to Vietnam 12 years ago, he was inspired to paint on canvas because it reminded him of Vietnam’s struggles. He says that canvas was used to make sacks to contain rice when the country was at war, and that just seeing the raw material moved him. Cam says the realness of unrefined canvas expresses Vietnam’s painful past. Returning home Cam left Vietnam when he was young and was influenced by European trends when he studied fine arts in France. However, he says that in both his life and work, his Asian origins gradually emerged like a person returning home after a trip around the world.
Art Vietnam Gallery director Suzanne Lecht was left with very strong impressions of Cam’s imagery.“Cam’s bits of jute and other distinctly Vietnamese traces are imposed upon fractured landscapes illustrating an unspoken diary, exposed for all to see,” she says. “Ever mindful of the beauty of movement the artist methodically pursues his future, honors his past, reveres the present, and exposes injuries accumulated along the way. Running like the river of time itself, Cam allows all the forces of his life to collide on the canvas. The memories, graced by time’s fine wash are content to just be…residing as chapters portraying a life fully lived.”
ABOUT NGUYEN CAM
Nguyen Cam was born in 1944 in the northern province of Hai Phong. In 1958, he moved with his parents to Vientiane, Laos. He started to draw when he was 14. In 1969, he studied at the National Fine Arts School of Paris and graduated in 1973. In that same year, he won the “Academie des Beaux-Arts” (Academy of Beautiful Arts) prize in Paris. He has exhibited in France, the U.S, Spain, Belgium, Germany and Vietnam. He now lives in France and often returns to Vietnam.
Reported by Hong Nga
