Nestled in a high-rise where the terrestrial detachment induces a lightness of being, the exhibition “Parcours” spirals into artist Le Quoc Thanh’s ongoing quest to find sacredness in our mundane world. Born in post-1975 Vietnam, Le entered the Ho Chi Minh City University of Fine Arts in 1994, a time when Socialist Realism was entrenched as the dominant aesthetic ideology. Finding himself at a stalemate within the educational system, Le dropped out and turned his attention to movements outside the country. He was particularly fascinated by Abstract Expressionism, whose bold adherence to form and deeply personal and emotive style the artist would later channel in his unique pictorial language.
Le’s paintings can be read as attempts to capture on canvas an elusive light through a patchwork of color and a wild array of brushstrokes of varying density, movement, and velocity. Through his litanies of analog times, scribbled measurements, and the deployment of avatars like Edvard Munch’s Scream-er or the raging Red Bull logo, Le cobbles together a meditation on the role of the individual in a society obsessed with consumerist values, quantifiable standards, and fantasies of subterranean unrest. As a final touch on this exquisite mélange, the artist scatters random mementos across the painted surfaces: a knife, a doll’s head, a sausage wrap, a pair of underwear. These encapsulated memories serve as landmarks in Le’s sublime psychogeography, where flows of light, time, and emotion all converge to render calm within chaos.
— Hung Duong
