Phuong Manh Vu to open body painting exhibition, the “Life” exhibition, at 6pm, March 12 at the L’Espace Centre, 24 Trang Tien, Hanoi with the participation of five female models.
A graduate of the Hanoi Culture and Art School’s Oil Painting Faculty, Manh thinks that artists are those who seek beauty through their limitless creativeness.

In his first time working in a public space outside of his painting workshop and in front of an audience, Manh will paint the bodies of five girls.
Last year, Manh introduced his body paintings at the Lanh Giang Festival on male bodies. Most recently, he painted on buffaloes at the Spring Ploughing Festival.

Manh said that he began making body paintings in 1996. At that time, he didn’t know the name of this art, but he felt that body painting was a highly artistic expression. The bodies of models are made beautiful with artists’ ideas and colors.
Besides body painting, his “Life” exhibition will include video art, installation and performance pieces plus audio artworks.
A large-sized painting spanning from the ceiling to the floor and pictures on columns will create a strong effect on the exhibition space. Manh will lie in a glass coffin with water, oxygen pipes and flowers. Explaining this work, Manh said that this is the image of how nature and humans in daily life are being harmed and they need help! This is also the major theme of the exhibition.
From two corners of the L’Espace centre, a video clip will be screened, backed by different pieces of music performed by Vu Nhat Tan and Linh Dung. The sound comes from life, with noise and brassy sounds that people suffer every day. The familiar and strange sounds will make the exhibition more lively and fanciful.
The five female models, after being painted to express his messages about life, human and nature, will move with the sounds, lights and pictures to reflect the silence and the movement, the darkness and the light. The exhibition will express the mayhem in life and nature.

The exhibition may be shocking and some may like it, some may not like it and some may not understand it, but will surely have to think about it. Young artists like Phuong Vu Manh are contributing to making “contemporary art” become the art of the public.
Credit: VietnamNet.