“Nhat ky ngay thuong” (The daily diary), which is young artist Nguyen Dinh Hoang Viet’s first personal exhibition at New Space Art Foundation (NSAF) residential space in Phu Vang, Thua Thien – Hue province and is running till Sept 11, depicts the rational and irrational in an intriguing way.

Although Viet, 25, graduated in applied art in 2012, he decided to choose art and working as a free artist to be his lifelong career.

During his university years, Viet won several awards for his paintings. He steadily made a deep impression on spectators through group exhibitions from 2007 to now.

The “Daily diary” exhibition is no exception though his techniques are quite different now.

Viet paints objects and animals on the surface of the packaging boxes, used newspapers, which are considered "ready make" materials in contemporary art perspectives.

His favorite objects are cigarette butts, stubs of 2B pencils, crabs, fish, cicadas and ducks, which are all dead or dying. Though Viet’s style seems stonyhearted and simple, his paintings are strangely charismatic to  viewers. Viet has a clever and ingenious approach in utilizing the available array of colors and information from words or pictures, to which he adds his paintings.

His works are thus a symbiosis and resonance between available materials and added items to produce a complete entity that generates new meanings. Examples are a lizard which is trying to push the letter of “I” out of the phrase “Filter White Horse” – a White Horse tobacco can, or a crab waving when tied, a duck being in flapping posture though it has been plucked, or a cigarette butt which has its bar code blurred deliberately.

Though of small sizes, the nineteen oil paintings at the exhibit give the viewers intriguing feelings of  ambivalence.