VietNamNet Bridge – US artist Donald Damask will open his exhibition entitled “Blood, Sweat and Tears” at Art Vietnam Gallery, 7 Nguyen Khac Nhu, Hanoi, introducing 11 print works on Vietnamese do paper.

Sweat No. 5 and Blood No. 5 by Damask

All artworks displayed in Hanoi this time were created based on Damask’s feelings from his trips to Asia and Europe.

Damask sought colours and materials from specific places. He discovered the differences between reds in China and reds in Mongolia and north Vietnam.

“Materials like metal, timber, and stone have special colours and the cover of time which I can’t see in North America. Many of the materials I have used in these artworks come from countries that I’ve passed through and made impressions on me,” he said.

“Silver and gold laminated pieces (which are used to restore wall paintings in Italy), wholly-cotton paper and bronze pieces that I have used come from Florence (Italy), cashmere cloth from Mongolia, vicuna from Peru and Do paper from Hanoi,” the artist said.

This exhibition takes its inspiration from the surfaces that create the texture of life in Hanoi. These Giclee monoprints are the result of a series of photographs the artist shot while in Hanoi in 2005. They have not been digitally manipulated or enhanced; instead they are an attempt to heighten the actual only by way of the quality of the materials used and the selective vision of the artist. Each of these 22 images is printed in an edition of one on handmade cotton rag paper from Italy.

Complementing the Giclee monoprints is a series of 11 sculpted paper works that are inspired from the traditional handmade Do paper of Vietnam. During the same visit to Hanoi which inspired the monoprints, Damask discovered Do paper – a uniquely Vietnamese paper which has been used by laymen, artisans, and artists for centuries.

Today only two families remain for whom the creation of this Do paper remains a viable profession and they are kept in business almost entirely by the artistic community of Vietnam. Ever cognizant of the distinctive beauty of handcrafted paper and of time’s ability to efface even the most longstanding traditions, Damask began to integrate the Do paper into much of his subsequent work.

For “Blood, Sweat & Tears” the artist chose to experiment in the three dimensional form further compounding his love of colour and texture. Printing broad swathes of colour onto the layered Do paper, Damask twists and manipulates the paper into an abstract sculpted object. The folds and bends of the paper enhance and exaggerate the variations of colour, accentuating the difference between line and surface. Piercing each work is a single thorn imposing the vulgarity that nature can exercise upon all structured compositions.

John Nunley, the curator of the St. Louis Art Museum (France), commented about Damask’s work: “Each creativeness in the work can be seen as a note in a song that suggests a thought, a feeling of whom and where I am in this immense universe.”

(Source: TP/ hanoigrapevine/artvietnamgallery)