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Speech by Mr. Michio Seki, former
executive councilor of RIKEN,
at the opening party of “The Joy of Imagination – paintings by
Nguyen Dinh Dang”
BiCE Tokyo,
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Good afternoon, ladies and
gentlemen
I would like to sincerely
congratulate Mr. Dang on the occasion of his 2nd solo exhibition in
Dr. Dang was invited to RIKEN in
1994 by Dr. Akito Arima for
scientific collaboration. An eminent nuclear physicist, Dr. Arima
was the president of RIKEN at that time. After his retirement from RIKEN, he
became minister of Education, Science and Technology of Japan.
I guess that around 1995, after
settling in
When I received this invitation
postcard with the exhibition’s title "The joy of imagination", I was very much interested in the painting "The
Winter Ocean" printed on it as it tells us the life of Dang - artist.
In the center of this picture, the
artist’s mother, an excellent medical doctor, is nursing his father, who has
been struggling with the deteriorating condition of his health. The scenes in
the background must be the distant past, when they first met each other, then
spent their youthful and joyful days as students in
His father, who was a high-school
teacher of mathematics, was very fond of drawing. He often drew varieties of
images on the blackboard at their house in
Since then, the boy had been
enthusiastically learning painting by himself just as a naked kid learning how
to walk. About forty years later, this boy became a professional artist. I’m
now imagining that, on the 10th anniversary after he became an artist, Mr. Dang
created this painting with his deep thought of his old father, who had given
him a starting push into the life of an artist.
Floating objects, transparent
colors, immense space, and in particular, depths of time are few features of Dang’s paintings, which always amaze me. From time to time,
he made the images of his beloved wife, Mai, and their only child, Dong, appear
on the canvases. His works span a variety of genres and usually have stories
underneath. They wake up our imagination. They impress spectators endlessly.
Also today, I came here to have such a wonderful feeling.
In conclusion, let me say few
words to the artist. Mr. Dang, I hope you will go on to break a new ground as
only you can, just as you had done as a nuclear physicist and an artist, in
your own world, which is different even from that of Salvador Dali or Vermeer,
the world of Nguyen Dinh Dang.
Thank you.
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(*)
Actually this is the 4th solo exhibition by N. Dinh Dang held in
(translation from the original Japanese
by Mr. M. Seki)
