Wax - Candles. The metaphor of dead and human warmness

In reality, waxes are materials to make candles.  Light from the core illuminates the outside world, animating drawing figures as a moon lantern.  It is a symbol of the humanly warmness.  Its drops resemble desired tears of a distant lover.   Light leads the way to eternity.  It also represents something that dead, deceptive and ephemeral - a mask of the dead, heart-less solidity, easily melt-down mess or the delusion covering the truth… 

La Huy has a unique encounter with the material and mastered it to a visual language at adept level. Newspapers are curled up in wax like a fresh spring roll for an information hunger. Pages ripped out from the Bible, the Pali Dhammapada or plainly unreadable prints, clichéd dogmas or enduring beliefs, intellectuals or hypocrites are all enshrouded with opaque wax. Those information and knowledge simultaneously nurturing and trapping us could be such spiritual supplies or deadly destruction, but also could be a reincarnated flames providing light and warmness. The references are broad and inspiring, though very much in the hand of the viewers.

The human figure perhaps lies upon the middle. There would be a lovely pure soul, blessed as a godly source of light inside that white wax shirt with angelic patterns. A huge torso of an expected woman evokes not only the nurturing, loving and tender but the hope and anxiety, the glowing happiness, delicate and vulnerable, both conceptually and emotionally. It is falling, breaking, blowing out, melting down… It is the death lurking at the back of the eternality of light. Amongst the series, these two sculptures by La Huy are advantageously reached to a certain level of aesthetic, absolutely mesmerizing the viewers. They remind me of the poetry by Han Mac Tu:
“My love, would you saw the miracle happened last night
The Spring has come without anyone knew about it”

Is it the mission - if there is any - of the artwork/artist all about? Is it knowing, receiving and appreciating such the ever-existing beauty but “without anyone knew about it”?

In the context of entertain/scandal-driven culture as of present, La Huy’s exhibition is truly rare and “exceptional.”

Written by Nguyễn Quân
Translated by Vũ Liên Phương