onepeople
met with Hung in Brussels, September 1997. Our contact there, Jean Paul Dispaux
highly recommended that we meet with him and subsequently set up a meeting for
us. Also a fantastic chef, Hung invited us to his studio and home for lunch one
afternoon
Hung's
paintings and sculpture use the body as a platform whereby his deepest thoughts
of the body are fused together or simply missing key bodyparts. With one eye on
composition and anatomy and the other on surreal relationships, his work is wholly
representational and suggestive, both playful and grotesque.
We
returned twice to Brussels and before we finally departed we were treated to some
of the most exquisite Vietnamese food unrivaled yet.
Hung
is mad. We've known this for a while. Hung is mad, which is fortunate for him.
Fortunate for us too, after all. On his arrival in Belgium, Hung was selling chips
at the North Station. Which neither Egon Schiele nor Leonardo da Vinci had done
before him. On th eother hand, Hung like them scribbles all over sketchbook after
sketchbook. That's what I always liked best in the works of Egon and Leonardo
- and now, in Hung's -: their sketches. Over hundreds of pages, Hung's dream and
nightmare characteres shove and jostle, ink strokes crisscross and intermingle,
black as black can be, setting loose on paper misshapen, howling, vociferous monsters.
Hung draws as he lives: uninterruptedly. The pen slithers on the paper, travels
here and there, doesn't know, doesn't plan, doesn't end,doesn't settle anything
for good. The pen probes, starts again, propels drawings at the speed of thought,
more, ever more. There is no such thing as a completed perfect work, drawing follows
upon drawing, like life's minutes. the work : to draw as you live. And drawing
is a manner of living.
As
for Hunt, Hung reckons that Hunt is mad. But then Hung is mad. Which is fortunate
for him, after all. And for us too.
___________________________________________________Jaco Van Dormael, Cineaste
translated
by Hunt in his collaborative book with Hung,
HUNG HUNT : DUOGRAPHIE
