BENEATH DEEP RIVERS, FIELDS SUBMERGED: ĐỒNG CHÌM ĐÁY NƯỚC I Wiking Salon Centec Tower

13 December 2024 - 19 January 2025

Overview

“Mount Ba Thê to one side, Mount Cấm ahead, Mount Sóc and Mount Đất across—once poetically majestic, now appear small and flattened in the vast expanse of water and sky.” Sơn Nam (1926 - 2008)

At 75 years old, Ca Lê Thắng appears to be in the prime of his creative career. From 2021 to 2023, he held two critically acclaimed solo exhibitions in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, featuring his series: Floating Season. Both events received widespread recognition and praise from the art professionals. Not merely a continuation of his most recent works, Beneath Deep Rivers, Fields Submerged offers viewers a succinct narrative of Ca Lê Thắng's artistic evolution. Featuring more than 20 works spanning various periods from 1991 to the present, the exhibition traces his creative journey.

Born in the South and relocating to the North at the age of six, still, Ca Lê Thắng vividly recalls the feeling of water rising overnight during the floating season. The vast Mekong Delta landscape is submerged under water.

For Ca Lê Thắng, the floating season is a symbolic representation of memory rather than a literal subject. Through his works, he embarks on a contemplative journey, reconciling the shadows of war, longing for home, and overcoming personal loss. In the past, we saw him navigating through the chaos of his inner world. Now, in his latest works created between 2023 and 2024, the landscapes not only transform magically on the surface but also reveal Ca Lê Thắng's intense brushwork—an outcome of over three decades of layering, scraping, pounding, and reapplying. These forms have now dissolved into the essence of his very being.

Gone are the influences of Joan Miró, Picasso, or Mark Rothko. Ca Lê Thắng has forged his own distinct artistic language.

“The Floating Season series has gradually shed unnecessary details, revealing the essential forms of a fertile, vibrant field… Compared to the October 2022 exhibition in Hanoi, what we see now is no longer fragmented depictions but bold, powerful strokes—the strength of the artist himself, fully embodying his emotional depth and the lingering sorrows that have awaited their manifestation on canvas.” — Nguyễn Trung, 2023

The exhibition also features archival materials from Ca Lê Thắng’s dynamic years with the Group of 10 Artists (1989–1996), shedding light on his pivotal role in the history of Vietnamese art, particularly his contributions to the revival of abstract art practices in Vietnam following the Đổi Mới period.

(Excerpt from the curatorial essay by Lê Thiên Bảo, December 2024)