The strange voices of contemporary art

At the end of May and beginning of June, painter Ngo Dong and painter Ty (actual name Mai Hoang Minh) showed their latest works in two different exhibition locations without an appointment. publicize their end.

Inspiration from the sea

Late 90s painter Ty (1960-2023) began painting. Ty, a self-taught painter who did not graduate from school, experimented with numerous subjects, including couple love, family love, and human loneliness, whereas many artists of the time painted banyan trees, wells, communal dwellings, or ao dai.

Ty suddenly liked fishing till 2010. His reunion with the sea opened another entrance. Since then, Ty spent a lot of time at sea with the fisherman, eating, sleeping, and sharing their joys and sorrows. Ty's paintings focused on fish, ships, fishermen, faded conical caps, light poles, oil lights, and austere individuals with rice bowls.

Ty's paintings depict people and objects with simple, naughty, and forceful brush strokes, and stylized, and minimalist themes that evoke the seafarers' pains and struggles.

Ty's vivid paintings contrast with characters' skeletal hands, enormous jagged teeth, conical caps, light burdens, and cartoon-like features, creating a style that was unique among Vietnamese painters of the time. Ty's paintings are tranquil, dreamy, and hopeful, yet they also reflect and obsess over fishermen's harsh lives, according to Lotus Gallery.

Painting by artist Ty.

"Sea and Ty," Ty's latest Lotus Gallery exhibition at C. Space Design Complex (District 7), featured 43 paintings that offered a vivid and sound story about the water and the region's residents. central coast. The guestbook postcards from international collectors may be the most emotional. Ty has painted over 1,000 marine and fishermen-themed oil and acrylic paintings. He had over 10 domestic and international exhibitions. Foreign collectors admire Ty's works. Ty died on the boat in the middle of the sea in the arms of his beloved fisherman.

40 years of holding the first solo exhibition

Ngo Dong began drawing in 1975. He prefers realistic and surrealist paintings inspired by actual life to help people experience what he wants to portray without noticing. requires hard thinking. He believes that only nature, the lively daily life outside, is truly beautiful.

The scene of a girl riding a motorbike with her hair blowing in the wind, the moonlight on the other side, and the water surface gleaming in the sun, all make the world much richer. He said Saigon shaped him the most. "Everywhere I go, I just love going back to Saigon, I still want to paint about Saigon," he remarked.

This Multi-Dimensional Reality exhibition by Ngo Dong uses photorealism to painstakingly, vividly, and sharply display details on the canvas surface. photography—a 1960s and 1970s US art trend. However, Ngo Dong's paintings offer co-presented spaces from a more multidimensional perspective.

"Ngo Dong builds an own in art with a consistent aesthetic point of view despite choosing a wide range of themes from the soft to the thorny of life," unlike his realist colleagues. The artist carefully observes, interacts, listens to young people, and is sensitive to his surroundings when looking at beauty. All have a joyful, realistic style. "The artist's miniature society is for the young generation, present and future," stated painter Nguyen Ngoc Dan.

Experts say Ngo Dong's multi-dimensional reality is a breath of fresh air, full of youthful vigor and youthful breathing like a painter's spirit, even though he has only had one solo exhibition after 40 years of painting.