Craig Thomas Gallery is pleased to announce Life Ordinary, a solo exhibition of water colour on silk paintings by Hanoi-based artist Le Thuy.
The collection will be open to viewing by the public at CTG’s Saigon gallery from Feb. 18 to Mar. 12, 2020.
Many first time viewers of Le Thuy will express a mixture of admiration and confusion when encountering her work.
What at first glance appears ethereally beautiful also reveals itself to be deeply macabre. The silk paintings exhibit both the artist’s intense love of nature and her great lament for what is being lost in the natural world as mankind’s race forward continues.
Le Thuy’s silk paintings take the micro-events that are taking place constantly in nature and shows them for the titanic life and death struggles that they really are.
Below, the artist offers her perspective on her latest collection of outstanding works.
“This series is about my journey to find the pristine beauty of nature. A place where humanity is a part of rather than apart from nature; not seeking dominion over it. I want to find the serene beauty and romanticism of nature.
“I’m not the first person to evoke and explore the beauty of nature, certainly not the last nor especially particular in my depiction of nature. I am simply a person living in a time that people call ‘modern’.
“Comfort and convenience have separated us completely from nature. I feel suffocated. I long to see a drop of morning dew on a leaf, the splendid redness of the setting sun, watch the passage of time on the fading petals, enjoy the brightness of stars against the dark sky.
“All creatures are created equal. But are we really equal to other creatures on this rock? We, humans, tear down mountains, poison rivers, destroy habitats, wiping out entire species. We set ourselves above and apart from nature to exploit it and in our selfishness and greed, we modern people, are forever lonely.
“The works in this series titled Life Ordinary depict my grief for the loss of the natural world, our collective loss. There is much evidence in literature, poetry, architecture that celebrates the majesty of nature and our place within it. Now, we have nothing but pollution, ugly high rises, barren fields and diseased herds. Nature was beautiful, but we have rendered it pitiful. And, it would be pitiful if one day we only know the beauty of nature through recorded images from the past.
“I especially like the passage in Masanobu Fukuoka’s ‘On Straw Revolution.’ Fukuoka states, ‘Snake bites frog …hawk hunts snake. Wolf attacks hawk. One person kills the wolf, and later succumbs to tuberculosis. Bacteria grows in human corpses and the grasses thrive on nutrients from bacterial activity. Insects attack plants and frogs feed on insects.’
“Humans are just a part of the natural cycle of life. Going against nature will only lead to self-destruction. I choose images from nature and arrange them according to the law of survival. All living beings are wrestling with life and death approaches. As the bird lies decaying in the field, covered in flies, corn stalks wither desolately with only the echo of the water fowl in the emptiness. Even the comfortable herd struggles with nature for survival. I am recording a heroic epic about the death of all life. I hope that after death, life returns as ordinary.”
Craig Thomas Gallery is at 27i Tran Nhat Duat St., Tan Dinh Ward, District 1, HCMC
For more information, call 090 388 8431 or email cthomasgallery@gmail.com
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