Date:novembre 22, 2016
Tags:concours
1. Premisses of the project
Discovery
End of 1992. The end of the year is dull (my goodness, these are things that sometimes happen!) And we are a few to look for new business opportunities. Lam 
Duong (living in Brussels) is a longtime friend and as the name suggests, it is a Vietnamese that became de facto « Vietkieu », meaning a Vietnamese living abroad for a long time. He was so insistent that I go to Vietnam to explore the enormous business potential that it is really to make him happy that I decided to make the step and go explore the new Eldorado for bold and visionary foreigners!
VietnamIn late November, we are out for adventure. It will be the enthusiasm. During a second trip in February 1993, grateful to the local introductions of Lam (thanks to a still unlimited family in Vietnam), we will be received like royalty and Mr. Vice-President of the People’s Committee will make us the honours of his office and will give us its precious time. We meet many personalities and we enjoy the country including discovering the charm of the Saigon River on a small boat rented for a crust of bread.
The quality of the welcome, the huge business potential in all areas, funding requirements, legislation (favourable) for foreign investors and the circumstances of the moment will contribute to make me have a brain wave.
It’s decided, I will organize a major conference in Geneva on Investment Opportunities in Vietnam and this, in October 1993.
VietnamIt is high time to get to work and two trips will be needed to organize an official delegation which will consist of Mr. LeVan Cu, Tran Thien Tu and Pham Dac Duyen.
To prepare myself, I take part myself to two seminars about Vietnam, the first in Hong Kong and the other in Singapore. The last seminar will give me the opportunity to meet Garry J. Dilworth, pioneer of Australian and foreign investment in Vietnam with the restoration of the Norfolk Hotel on the Le Than Thon Street in Saigon.
Very soon we will become good friends and he will be in the journey to Geneva.
Geneva: October 1993 – The conference
This conference marks the end of a stage of discovery, of a laborious learning and the beginning of a hope, that of becoming an « expert » in Vietnamese Business Law! The conference will be a great success with nearly one hundred participants and an audience of high level from several countries. This conference allows me to meet Antoine Savary, president of STS Industry in Lausanne, a first class Swiss company specialized in surfaces treating equipment.
T
his meeting will be fatal because we decide to leave together in Vietnam after passionate discussions on various artworks of Vietnamese artists and we are developing a real project. At this point and during lost hours spent in the galleries of Dong Khoi Street and elsewhere, I started a small collection of paintings because there are excellent artwork at affordable prices especially for drawings and paintings on various papers.
While travelling in preparation for the conference, I began friendly relations with several galleries run by people very friendly and extremely available and all the time to discuss such an artist and then another made me want to meet them. So, I was initiated to this Vietnamese painting and then helped by Mrs. DIEP from the Gallery named after her (recently installed behind the Museum of Fine Arts), by Mr. Bac from the Gallery Do Huy Bac in Khoi Street, then by the Gallery Vin Loi, by the Gallery A&T led by the amiable Mr. Anh and finally by the Tu Do Gallery, led by Mrs. Tran Thi Thu Ha, herself an artist and her husband, always so kind.
All these contacts will prove to be very valuable and the assistance provided by Ms. Thu Ha and Ms. Diep will be invaluable in the progressive realization of our project.
HURNER and SAVARY or in the research of Lost Time
Finally, we get together and on the road to meet together many artists, some of which are known sometimes from me and sometimes from him. We will see Bui Ngoc Tu (the magician of the dual male / female), Nguyen Than (the nostalgic dreamer of a lost world), Nguyen Quan (the unrepentant researcher of impossible balances) and many others.
We decide, while our collections of paintings are growing, to organize a first major exhibition in Geneva in December, it will be MEKONG 1995 in the gallery of the Noga Hilton.
A first contact « general public » that will be a complete success and a real discovery for Geneva amateurs so we decided to organize MEKONG 1996 in a large gallery in Ballens in Morges. Ballens will be a true way of the cross for A. Savary that will organize everything with the invaluable assistance of Ms. Dung as this exhibition will bring together 16 artists and some 50 paintings with a prestigious Honorary Committee members including Jean-Pascal Delamuraz, President of the Swiss Confederation.
Ballens will be a great success and the artists Nguyen Quan and Nguyen Than will spend fifteen days in Bougy-Villars, at the home of A. Savary. This will lead to some memorable evenings where the famous Wine of Valais will participate in the development of strong friendships and some unusual artworks.
This was in June 1996.
For a year, during various trips made for business in Vietnam, with Garry J. Dilworth with whom I work closely, the contacts with the artists take shape and grow to become friendly.
It clearly goes something extraordinary in Vietnam. The whole country is in turmoil since the government decided to welcome foreign investors with open arms. There is excitement in the air, quite a stir because delegations succeed one another, and everyone dreams of rapid changes. People talk about Tiger, the 5th Dragon of the South East Asia although there is so much to do and that patience will really turn out to be a virtue in this country and adventurers coming from entire charter will quickly disillusioned.
But this creative atmosphere is also present in the field of painting and it is « visible », if we keep the eyes open.
The idea
While Anthony is struggling like hell doing both his job for Mekong96 and for its personal business of industrial, I have the idea to take the opportunity of all this creative fuss to organize a large painting competition that would allow the most representative artists of this new trend which is part of DOI MOI to perform two works each on a given subject and in a format determined.
In Saigon, nobody cares whether this artist is a neo-expressionist, a postmodernist, a conceptual artist … or God knows what else. The artists paint and express their individual sensitivity of their respective experience and talent. We like the spontaneity, the freshness, the evolution of each other.
It is far from the lonely wanderings of a critique that is lost in an esoteric language understood by a few insiders lost from reality. It is far from a society out of breath looking to get accustomed to a « structural » unemployment excessive and destructive of hope. It is far from the anguish of globalization and information technology at any cost.
Here, everything seems possible. There is hope for the first time from a long time ago. The artists can express themselves freely, without constraints, except perhaps a few spills « New York style » in Hanoi among the group of five that is going too fast and burn stages. Freedom has limits though, as we shall see shortly.
There is no obsession to always refer anything to another. We are far from Paris and New York.
Certainly, there will always be a good soul to recall that particular painting is inspired by a particular famous artist while the Vietnamese artist criticized did not do it on purpose but it doesn’t matter at the end. Here, the artists do not feel obliged to wear a label on their schoolbag.
MARC HURNER and SHANNON CURRY
As the project became clearer, I meet by chance in a gallery of HCMC Ms. Shannon K. Curry, an American living in Tokyo passionate by painting Vietnamese oriented especially the one from Hanoi. She has organized several exhibitions in Tokyo, she speak Japanese and hopes to return to San Francisco to open an art gallery. So there are other crazy people to share this enthusiasm, so much the better, we’ll gather.
The opportunity was too good and very soon she will join the small group and share contacts, friendships … the passion on.
Cesare Ranchilio will join this core group in early 1997. He is a longtime friend, President of CLUB KIRON in Paris, a plain cultural centre with theatre, galleries, recording studios, home publishing and record company. He also is passionate about contemporary painting and a knowledgeable collector.
With the arrival of Shannon and Cesare, the project will be able to take its final form as we have predestined places to welcome the paintings that will be made by the artists: Ho Chi Minh City, Brussels, Paris, Tokyo and San Francisco and new energy to achieve the objectives.
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