‘In Vitra+’ A Solo Exhibition by Pham Khac Quang

Bài viết cho triển lãm của Claire Driscoll

The choice of medium for an artist is often a combination of personal passion for a technique and process, combined with dedicated direction from an influential teacher or mentor. Print called the most clearly of all practices to PhạmKhắc Quang, who has established himself as one of Vietnam’s most proficient, diverse and established printers, he creates evocative artworks with a strong personal narrative and connection; finding beauty in what others could perceive as the ordinary.

In Vitra +, Phạm Khắc Quang’s fourth solo exhibition shows a body of work created from an ambition to focus solely on his technique and a subversion of the traditional printing technique whilst having the ability to have rest from the creative quest for a defining concept. The work you see here does not pretend to offer complex conceptual solutions from the mind of the Artist but is an in-depth study and creation of a pioneering process and technique where the Artist tests their capability beyond common bounds.

The choice of medium can often define an Artist’s, work, practice and process - this is especially apparent for a printer. Preparation, testing, planning, technique, the pressure you must learn to apply consistently with both your hand and eye are of equal measure to the response you wish you evoke in your work. The life of a printer can be a complicated emotional response as the practitioner struggles through the definition of their own process before yielding a final result - with often disappointing results for the time laid down beforehand.  In Vitra + is a model of Quang’s indomitable desire to make and create, dissatisfied with the constraints press printing can bring but married to the process and technique, Quang looked to deconstruct the material and processes to break away from traditional norms. Beginning with early experiments in ceramic Quang’s gaze moved to glass and stainless steel and he became convinced and fascinated by the possibility of printing onto new surfaces. A complex lonely discourse of sampling, trialing, broken glass, poor prints and bus journeys to use a kiln in another province contributed to the creation of the work you see here in Manzi.

In Vitra + is an incomplete completion, a pause to reflect on the achieved new technique which will not only inform future projects but shows the result of an intensely involved and varied journey of discovery. The works here are created as more a body of completed sketches -  a documented archive of a perfected technique – than final artistic solutions. More than 1500 hours of trials allowed Quang to progress to this point, hours filled with the discovery of working with an alien medium – glass/stainless steel - and the knowledge gained to create these pieces. Quang has found himself bound by a new set of constraints, a familiar concept to printers: the size of the kiln in which to fire the work, the viscosity of the pigment used to print onto new surfaces, the searing temperatures and the fragility of the glass combined with the interaction of the glass with the printing press, and the unforgiving surface of the metal.

Phạm Khắc Quang has broken and recreated not just his technique but his vision and capability as a printer and redefined his role as a practitioner. Too often the printer as an Artist can be mistaken for that of an Artisan, this body of work stands defiant in the face of the supposition that the personal process of the Artist as maker is irrelevant.