about
“The entire Vietnamese people are determined to mobilize all their physical and mental strength, to sacrifice their lives and property in order to safeguard their independence and liberty.” – ‘Declaration of Vietnamese Independence’, Ho Chi Minh, Hanoi 1945. Le Quy Tong is a child of modern Vietnam; born in 1977 in Hanoi, two years after the fall of Saigon to Viet Cong troops marked the beginning of the Vietnam’s reunification. He is part of the first generation of Vietnamese in over 150 years to have suffered neither colonial rule nor war, so it is no wonder his work deals with the legacies of this struggle. Tong’s latest exhibition True Gold, comes after the success of his comeback show True Blue. Following a period of depression, his return to Vietnam’s contemporary art scene marks a new era for the artist in both style and subject. Sourcing images from mass media and archives, Tong’s latest works transcends time and dissolves borders in a global study of political discord. Chronologically, True Gold begins with the triumphant 1945 August Revolution in Vietnam and ends with a dissident protestor at the 2014 Hong Kong Umbrella Revolution. The intermediate images reflect a widening gyre of unrest and revolutionary sentiment spanning the last seventy years, including photographs from the 1968 international anti-war protests and Total Freedom / anti-globalisation protest at the 2007 G8 summit. They appear faded, emphasising this passing through time and our removal from the original experience. Tong’s manipulations of each image create heavy distortions and eschew any clear reading of events. What we are left with is our own interpretation. Detached from their separate narratives, Tong re-contextualises the photographs in a unified presentation of disparate movements. Splotches and stains accentuate the exhibition’s historical tone, while fluid patterns and recurring geometric grids emerge to give a sense of movement and flux. Layers of oil paint become a visual representation for the layers of meaning observers can read into his work, and ultimately compound a feeling of confusion. Texts throughout the work are reversed and pixelated, suggestive of information, true or false, filtering at first through people, then generations, and finally into the present. Identities of people in the photographs are obliterated, and large groups reduced to expressive shapes and lines, as Tong’s focus rests not on the individual but the effectiveness of our collective power. In this manner, Tong’s new works address themes of memory, trauma and false truths; together they ask us to reexamine the contemporary, posing the question of what has been lost and gained with each fight. The words ‘freedom’ and ‘peace’ recur throughout the exhibition, not only encouraging us to consider a true meaning for each term, but, included alongside the recurring motif of gold, to also weigh up what sacrifices they are worth.
Location: Saigon Domaine, Ground Floor, 1057 Binh Quoi, Ward 29, Binh Thanh District, Ho Chi Minh City
documentation
