#Opening hours:

—Tuesday to Friday: 14.00 – 18.00 (closed on Mondays and on the date of Jan 01st, 2023)
—Saturday and Sunday: 10.00 – 18.00

#Location:

Á Space, Alley 59 Ngô Gia Tự, Long Biên District, Hanoi

#Biography: 
Primarily working with performance and installation, Vũ Đức Toàn has consistently engaged with the correlation between the spectator and the performer, the social rituals, as well as historical lapses of time that punctuate or bridge between past and present. His works often begin with simple concepts, and then are materialized through the repetition of performative gestures or visual motifs and through a laconic yet capacious selection of objects and materiality.
Toàn has participated in many exhibitions and performance art events locally and internationally, such as ‘Returning to the island of South‘ Performance Art Festival (Taiwan, 2017), solo exhibition ‘Disorderly Departure‘ (Nhà Sàn Collective, Hanoi, 2017), MoT+++ Performance Residency and Exhibition (HCMC, 2017), Guyu Action (China – Hong Kong – Taiwan, 2016), PAN ASIA 5 (Seoul, Korea, 2012), ‘Benign Tumor‘ (L’Espace, Hanoi, 2011)…
In 2010, Vũ Đức Toàn and Nguyễn Huy An founded ‘The Appendix Group‘, a performance artist group then including 6 members: Vũ Đức Toàn, Nguyễn Huy An, Nguyễn Song, Ngô Thành Bắc, Nguyễn Dương Hải Đăng and Hoàng Minh Đức. The Appendix Group is recognized as an outstanding performance group in Vietnam that pioneered group performance with a signature aesthetics blending vernacular sensibility with composition, imbued with symbols rich in constant contemplation of the bygones and anticipation of the time.
Since 2005, Toàn has also worked as an editor at the Association of Fine Art and its affiliated magazine. He is a member of the Curatorial Board at Nhà Sàn Collective starting from 2013, where he has mentored several generations of younger artists, as well as curating ‘Skylines with Flying People 4‘ with the Appendix Group (King’s Storage, Hanoi, 2020). Most recently, he curated several performance art events including ‘Morning – Noon – Afternoon – Evening’ (Á Space, Hanoi, 2022), IN:ACT 2022 (Nhà Sàn Collective & Á Space, Kassel & Hanoi, 2022), and ‘Tái Nạm’ (Mơ Art Space, Hanoi, 2022).
#Program:
Á is delighted to invite you to ‘Every Bilious Honeymoon’, a solo show by Vũ Đức Toàn (on view from December 30, 2022 till January 15, 2023).
Notes on the exhibition:
“When I was an undergraduate, teacher Phan Cẩm Thượng who taught cubism once said that cubism is the first impressions of smashing things. That its fetus is most palpable at the later stage of old master Cézanne’s oeuvre, that his artworks were not cubic but rather an integral component that later led to cubism. At that time, I gradually got the hang of it, and now after twenty years, I am still in that almost-comprehending state. Does that mean I haven’t outgrown or that I haven’t old-grown?
‘Every Bilious Honeymoon’ closely ties in with what was said above. Like the first-stroke sense of cubism, it resembles a post-confession state in which one begins to toil over collecting and gathering bits and pieces, in less of an unintentional manner and more of a hopeful state hinging upon the possibilities of something that is to be soon born out through means of restoration. Such acts of restoration would work at times and would not at others, or only serve as an admission of a broken fact right off the nose. Most realistically, one should prepare at least for a known-to-be-magic 502 glue bottle, and hope that it would be of use? When unscrewing the lid’s can, what we see most often is “Good luck next time”, and that next time actually exists.
“Every” is not “one”, it is rather magnified into a nature of repetitiveness, frequency, pulses, tempos, an un-diminished continuity.
“Week” as in an approximate rule of time, span-like, turn-like, whose medium followed by days, hours, minutes, sections that when calculated when multiplied at times become meaningless. Thereby, people keep saying: a tea-drinking queue.
“Moon”, one finds it harder to speak of something with the moon. Moon skims around. Moon insists. Moon is sometimes aggressive. But the moon brings forth senses of ranges, geography. Moon is never nearby, moon is always far upstream-wards, henceforth in proximity with oneiric sensations; don’t ever dream of such!
“Bust out/vỡ”, whose newest and most common synonym seems to be “bust out/toang”. If the use of the word “bust out/toang” is commonly seen then “bust out/vỡ” has become much rarer.
“Bibe” is easy to define: bitter-hell.”
Text translated by Nguyễn Thanh Tâm. Title translated by Nguyễn Hoàng Thiên Ngân.