Friday, 21 October 2011
While The Artist Sleeps His Art Gets Older
I met Radek a number of times over the past few years. He would come to Vietnam for a few months at a time, usually with his girlfriend Ylva, to work on his art and the film they were making about the H’Mong community in Sapa - people who for them had become like another family. We would see one another every now and again out with friends, share a drink, share a meal, a game of poker, and then he would be off again. It felt like I got to know him gradually, in installments.
Although we’d talked about his art before it wasn’t until the beginning of 2011, when he returned to Hanoi again, that I saw what he was working on. On his previous visits to Vietnam he’d told me of his frustrations when trying to find someone to collaborate with properly. He’d come close but it had never quite worked out. This time though, he found an artist and friend – Loi - who understood him and his ideas intuitively enough for them to be able to work together. He was clearly excited about this.
Normally, an artist uses tape to mask areas he doesn’t want painted. Radek’s idea was to make the masking tape itself the focal point of his art, and to use it to create scenes inspired by a combination of the higgledy-piggledy urban landscape of present day Vietnam and the pixilated scenery from the old computer games he played as a boy. The results were beautiful, jammed with detail and bordering on chaotic – just like the country that he loved. I saw more of him this time around and he was happy in his work, focused and driven to complete it.
Although we’d talked about his art before it wasn’t until the beginning of 2011, when he returned to Hanoi again, that I saw what he was working on. On his previous visits to Vietnam he’d told me of his frustrations when trying to find someone to collaborate with properly. He’d come close but it had never quite worked out. This time though, he found an artist and friend – Loi - who understood him and his ideas intuitively enough for them to be able to work together. He was clearly excited about this.
Normally, an artist uses tape to mask areas he doesn’t want painted. Radek’s idea was to make the masking tape itself the focal point of his art, and to use it to create scenes inspired by a combination of the higgledy-piggledy urban landscape of present day Vietnam and the pixilated scenery from the old computer games he played as a boy. The results were beautiful, jammed with detail and bordering on chaotic – just like the country that he loved. I saw more of him this time around and he was happy in his work, focused and driven to complete it.
