Art-U Room
Closes in 11 days
Often in art, one man's trash is another man's treasure. Art-U Room is currently showing the Vietnamese artist Vu Dan Tan's first Japanese solo exhibition, which takes paper recycling to a new level. As art materials were a scarce luxury during the Vietnam War, Vu, instead, collected discarded cigarette cartons, film boxes and candy wrappers.
Shaping this detritus with a knife and folding the pieces together, he crafted ethnic masks and animals based on Chinese and Greek mythological creatures and displayed them inside wooden cases that were commonly used by street merchants at the time. A self taught artist, the 60-year-old Vu purposely uses the original cigarette trademarks and brand designs as an integral part of the piece so that they show traces of their "former life."
"Suitcases of a Pilgrim" is a comprehensive exhibition, showing a variety of works from 1992 to the present. Vu currently resides among fashion stores on Hang Bong Street in Hanoi's shopping district, and their influence has seeped into his artwork. In 2000, he ceased making masks and started crafting elaborate dresses and undergarments out of brown cardboard boxes. The wings attached to some are a reference to Vu's reoccurring theme of Icarus' flight toward the sun and fall to his death.
Vu made 30 new boxed masks specifically for the Art-U exhibition, with "Reincarnation" painted on each as he is returning to his old style. Laboriously intricate and ornate, each sculpture is an imaginative blend of traditional Vietnamese street vendor culture and art world finesse.
