Ngự
Recently I've started working on my second job as a gallery assistant. The working pace is much slower than when I was in the advertising agency, so there were a lot more free time for sketching things.
It's an interesting job too. Mostly are Vietnamese paintings, and there are literally thousands of them for me to sponge it all in.
There is a collections of traditional "tranh-dzó" paintings that i thought was really interesting, so this is an attempt of mimicking them.
"Tranh-dzó" are paintings made from the barks of the "dzó" tree, to produce a very thin type of paper. It plays an important role in both Vietnamese traditional folk arts, as well as Vietnamese contemporary arts.
"Ngự", as the title suggested, is a Vietnamese word that either means "to reign over", "to rule" or "to dominate". In the drawings both man and beast are locked in a physical struggle. Although the man seems to be at the better hand, the beast are yet to be defeated. It is my attempt to reflects upon the duality of our nature; the imposed "civilized" ego and the more primal impulse, and how we try to balance these traits that formed our characters. Too much or too little of either traits is a good thing, so it's best to keep it locked and harmonized.
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