Manzi Art Space, in collaboration with Art Vietnam Gallery will present No & Meaning, a solo exhibition by visual artist Nguyen Minh Thanh, one of the most important artists of contemporary art in Viet Nam today.

Manzi Art Space, in collaboration with Art Vietnam Gallery, will present a solo exhibition by visual artist Nguyen Minh Thanh on December 9.

Long known in the art community for his thoughtful, introspective musings, Thành presents his life with simplicity and honesty. After 10 years of seclusion living a solitary, meditative life on a hillside in Da Lat, Thanh has reduced his art to a simple expression of his happiness.

As the artists says, “Before, when beauty appears, I feel happy. Now, when I am happy, beauty appears”.

Born in 1971 in Hanoi, Thanh graduated from the Viet Nam University of Fine Arts in 1996. He belongs to the first generation of Vietnamese avant-garde artists who experimented with less traditional methods of art, such as performance and installation in the 1990s and 2000s.

He later played an influential role in nurturing and shaping the subsequent development of contemporary and experimental art in Hanoi.

Intrigued by Buddhist concerns of attachment and escape, and using mainly Chinese ink and watercolour on handmade Vietnamese dó (poonah) paper, Thanh’s melancholic portraits are the results of his meditative and spiritual search for beauty, harmony and tranquility.

His No & Meaning exhibition will open at 6pm, December 9, and run until January 8 at Manzi Art Space, at 14 Phan Huy Ich Street. — VNS