Group Exhibition “Đi Vắng”

Exhibition: 10:00AM – 6:00PM, Tuesday – Sunday, 07.08 – 25.10.2026
Wiking Salon | 12 Nguyễn Hữu Thọ, Nhà Bè Ward, HCMC
The exhibition is open by prior appointment only.
Please send a direct message to the Facebook page to schedule your visit.

Detailed event information: https://hanoigrapevine.com/.../08/trien-lam-nhom-di-vang/

Information from the organizers:

Away evokes the absence of someone, or the act of leaving while traces of their presence still remain. In this exhibition of the same name, four artists, Lập Phương, Trần Nữ YênKhê, Trần Văn Thảo, and Ca Lê Thắng, engage in dialogue through the shared language of abstraction. Clear and ambiguous forms coexist, then transform into undefined flows of color and line. Have the forms and meanings within these abstract works disappeared, or do they in fact continue to exist in another invisible form?

Lập Phương (b. 1989) graduated in Monumental Art – Sculpture from Hanoi Architectural University. She established her artistic style very early through her first sculptures made from thin steel.

The value of sculpture may lie in its physicality, nurturing fundamental senses and humanity’s instinct to touch. In Phương’s practice, objects are created through the systematic integration of planes and surfaces into symmetrically structured compositions. Their forms are both sharp and delicately evocative upon a primal material foundation, seeking to capture a rhythm of harmonious dramatic movement. Within an overall sense of restraint, sharply defined details sometimes appear in the suggestive manner of classical Eastern poetry.

Her creative series Wings – Arches – Triangles – Infinity… correspond to an inevitable sequence of movement from primary motion to counter-motion and synchronized motion. Beneath them lies the state of mind of a traveler longing for harmony between people, and between humanity and the natural world. Inner landscapes merge with external surroundings, while the internal and external worlds become one. The presence of Phương’s works constructs space, occupies space, and belongs to space. This engagement with physical and psychological space gives each work the fundamental scale of monumental sculpture, embodying human intellect and intuition across realms of time and space.

By grasping recurring principles and modularizing individual units upon materials that tend toward the transient and indeterminate, Lập Phương’s works have become increasingly multidimensional and transformative, escaping structure and convention to approach emptiness, infinity, and impermanence.

Working across sculpture, painting, and cinema, Paris-based artist Trần Nữ YênKhê creates worlds where light and darkness merge in a subtle dance, while tensions between form and material are continuously explored. YênKhê’s works do not seek to recreate or represent specific images. Instead, abstract and dynamic forms evoke multiple emotional layers and imagined narratives through a poetic language that emphasizes the complexity and contradictions of human behavior.

Trần Nữ YênKhê studied at École Camondo, a prestigious private school of product design and interior architecture in Paris. Her work Borderline (2018), a remarkable sculpture created using traditional Vietnamese lacquer, was acquired by the Musée Guimet in Paris for the French National Collection in 2019, becoming the first contemporary artwork from Southeast Asia to enter this collection.

Alongside her visual art practice, YênKhê has built a distinguished film career spanning more than 30 years, appearing in leading roles in films including The Scent of Green Papaya (1993), Cyclo (1995), and The Vertical Ray of the Sun (2000), among many others. More recently, she served as Art Director and Costume Designer for The Taste of Things (2023), directed by Trần Anh Hùng, who received the Best Director Award at the 76th Cannes Film Festival.

Trần Văn Thảo is one of Vietnam’s leading abstract painters, known for his distinctive visual marks, rich fields of color, and balanced compositions that evoke a contemplative and tranquil atmosphere. For him, inspiration comes from the humble yet dynamic experiences of everyday life, as well as the intimacy and immediacy of his surroundings.

Trần Văn Thảo belongs to an influential generation of artists who emerged in the 1990s following the Đổi Mới reforms of 1986. He was a prominent member of the Group of Ten, a pivotal collective that helped establish abstract painting as a recognized language within Vietnamese art.

Trần Văn Thảo graduated from the Ho Chi Minh City University of Fine Arts in 1986 and has since participated in numerous exhibitions throughout Asia, Europe, and the United States. Notable international exhibitions include Out of Context, Huntington Beach Art Center, Huntington Beach, California, USA; Art Festival for World Peace, Seoul Arts Center, Seoul, South Korea; ASEAN Art Awards, National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; On the Horizon, Pacific Bridge Contemporary Southeast Asian Art, Oakland, California, USA; L’Anima Soffocata, Museo Biblioteca Archivio, Bassano del Grappa, Italy; Paris, Hanoi, Saigon: The Adventures of Modern Art in Vietnam, Pavillon des Arts, Paris, France; The Finest Collection from Sister Cities, Busan Metropolitan Art Museum, Busan, South Korea; Man and Woman, H&S Gallery, Brussels, Belgium, later touring Paris, Tokyo, San Francisco, and Singapore; From the Red River to the Mekong: The New Trend in Vietnamese Art, Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles, Paris, France; A Winding River: The Journey of Contemporary Art in Vietnam, Meridian International Center, Washington, D.C., USA, later touring several other venues across the United States; 11th International Contemporary Asian Art Exhibition, Metropolitan Museum of Manila, Philippines; Vietnamese Art After Doi Moi, Fujita Vente Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan; 10th International Contemporary Asian Art Exhibition, National Museum Art Gallery, Singapore; and Contemporary Vietnamese Art Exhibition, Tropical Museum, The Hague, the Netherlands.

In 2001, he received the Starr Foundation Fellowship from the Asian Cultural Council and participated in a four-month artist residency program in New York.

Trần Văn Thảo currently lives and works in Hồ Chí Minh City, Vietnam.

Ca Lê Thắng (b. 1949) spent his childhood in the Đồng Tháp Mười resistance zone. After the Geneva Accords were signed in 1954, he moved with his family to Hanoi in 1955 as part of the regrouping movement.

Ca Lê Thắng’s father was Director of the Social Sciences Library in Hanoi. As a result, from the early 1970s, he had access to numerous books, documents, and information from abroad as well as materials brought from southern Vietnam. Although educated within a socialist art system, he became curious about and began experimenting with Cubism as early as 1975, gradually moving toward abstraction by the late 1980s.

After reunification, Ca Lê Thắng returned to southern Vietnam in 1976 and worked as a lecturer at the Ho Chi Minh City University of Fine Arts until 1988. From 1988 to 2000, he served as Standing Deputy Secretary General of the Ho Chi Minh City Fine Arts Association.

Since graduating, he has continuously participated in art exhibitions of various scales throughout Vietnam. During his most active period from the late 1980s to 2000, he took part in numerous international exhibitions, including those at the Fujita Vente Museum in Tokyo, Japan, and the Metropolitan Museum of Manila in the Philippines, as well as exhibitions in Switzerland, South Korea, Singapore, and elsewhere.

Together with the Group of Ten, including Nguyễn Trung, Đào Minh Tri, Ca Lê Thắng, Nguyễn Tấn Cương, Đỗ Hoàng Tường, Trần Văn Thảo, Hứa Thanh Bình, Nguyễn Trung Tín, Vũ Hà Nam, and Nguyễn Thanh Bình, he regularly exhibited in the “Recent Works” group exhibition series from 1989 to 1995, helping revive the abstract painting movement across the country. Alongside Nguyễn Trung, he also co-founded and managed Ho Chi Minh City Fine Arts Magazine, an important publication released from 1991 to 1996.

For his significant contributions to Vietnamese art, he has received numerous awards from the Ho Chi Minh City Fine Arts Association and the Vietnam Fine Arts Association. His works entered the collections of the Vietnam National Fine Arts Museum, the Ho Chi Minh City Museum of Fine Arts, and the Quang San Art Museum at an early stage in his career.