From the organizer: In close collaboration with the College of Decorative Arts of Dong Nai and with the support of Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development, the exhibition at the Fine Arts Museum brings together for the first time in Ho Chi Minh City the artworks of 14 artists from Bien Hoa, a city well known for its ceramic tradition.

By pooling their energy, talents and ideals, the artists have formed a true collective to rethink Vietnamese ceramics, its heritage and its future. The project thus proposes to reconsider a forsaken tradition in decline, and call attention to a revival of Bien Hoa ceramics.

The productions are as diverse and varied as the personalities involved in the project. Whether it is about perpetuating ancestral knowledge or surpassing them to give rise to new forms, it is always a question of putting forward the medium, techniques and ideas that are revealing of our time, between tradition and innovation. 

In the works, we can discern three main tendencies even if the boundaries between them are often blurred: the artisanal, decorative arts and contemporary sculpture.

If the artists work the clay from different manners to model their thoughts following their own sensibilities, we can however notice some recurrent themes: life and death, creation and destruction, exterior and interior, void and full, feminine and masculine, yin and yang. We also can comprehend their interests for environmental issues, their concern for the animal world and aquatic fauna, the country crisscrossed by numerous waterways and large natural parks, enjoying a wide opening onto the sea. 

The form of the container is also present in the ensemble of the proposed creations. When it is not a question of continuing with meticulous talent the making of classical items (such as vases, pots, or platters), we can glimpse through the non-functional attempts, forms purely dedicated to contemplation. Ceramics then becomes a conceptual receptacle, filled with the artist’s thoughts. It is at this precise moment that we can speak about sculpture and contemporary art, in the comprehensive sense of the word.

The exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, without ever spotlighting one artist over another, will be spread out among three rooms on the ground floor of the building reserved for temporary exhibitions.

From a common agreement, and to break with museum academism, it has been decided to install the pieces on the floor and in mass, mixing them, to reinforce the ensemble idea, the group, privileging the collective for the benefit of the individual.

The floor of the museum, covered with straw mats, constitutes a pedestal for the presented pieces, a scenography simulating a market scene, a studio, or even storage. We can think here about an installation, a collective work. The pieces seem thus in a state of waiting for a future, and that is really the question posed here: What will happen with Bien Hoa's ceramics in the coming years, in the coming decades? How to preserve tradition while renewing it? How can artists appropriate an artisanal technique to give form to their ideas without falling into the trap of formalist automation? The collective proposes to take stock of this practice at the current time, in 2016.

This way of presenting the works is the simplest, the most modest. It is up to the visitor to sort their own judgment. This is not about imposing a work or playing with authoritative codes of display, but rather to propose on equal grounds pieces that have nothing or little to do with one another (apart from the fact that ceramics is a passion shared by these heterogeneous artists). 

There are no others words to describe the artworks than those that come to the minds of the visitors. There is nothing more to add on paper; by contrast, the artists’ words and their exchanges with the spectators will constitute the most lively traces that can come of this manifestation.

Clay For Thought, an exhibition curated by: 

Frédéric Dialynas Sanchez and Võ Hồng Chương-Đài

On view: September 22 to October 2, 2016

Opening reception and panel: September 24, 9 am

Artists: Đinh Công Lai, Đinh Công Việt Khôi, Hồ Thị Thu Cúc, Nguyễn Quang Hoàng, Nguyễn Quốc Chánh, Nguyễn Trọng Lộc, Nguyễn Trọng Tuấn, Nguyễn Trung Thường, Nguyễn Văn Cường, Nguyễn Văn Trung, Phạm Công Hoàng, Tô Văn Thăng, Trần Minh Công, and Trần Ngọc Thảo