Art & Entertainment News 8/7 TY shows love for fishermen via paintings   An artwork by TY. An exhibition by Vietnamese artist TY is on at Tu Do Gallery, featuring the profound love of the artist for fishermen on the central coast. On display are about 25 top artworks by the Hue City native selected among his creations in 2012-2015. Visitors can have a glimpse of daily life of fisherman. In addition,  rustic sceneries of local farmers will be also presented in “Bu Nhin,” “Vat Sua” and “Chan Bo.” The characters in TY’s paintings are depicted by liberal and simple but delighted lines in colorful layers of oil on canvas as if he drew playful strokes of kids on the sand or scribbles of prehistoric people on rocks. His penmanship and lines are bold, decisive and full of passion and determination like the farmers exposing their back in the sunlight and like the fishermen struggling with monsoons, winds and waves. In paintings, visitors can see teeth, hands, buffaloes, fish and faces that are rugged and challenging to all miseries and hardships of life. Humor and funny-look penmanship make TY’s works similar to cartoon paintings. Thanks to the edges around characters and things, his paintings look more like wood-printing artworks. However, TY has built his own style that can easily tell him apart. “For me, a painting initiative is always a start without an end. Things unknown or unseen are deep in our spirit, suddenly appear on canvas and become the product of the past forever. That continuation, continuation is happening on canvas. The recirculation has shown me the purity in the beauty of fear, in the beauty of desire for existence on earth. Thus, this way, the works that I named are the products of the past that have gradually emerged,” said the artist. TY, born Mai Hoang Minh, is a self-taught artist with super-realism style. Since 2000 he has painted over 800 paintings and has held some exhibitions in Saigon, France and the U.S. The paintings will be on show until July 28 at the gallery, 53 Ho Tung Mau Street, District 1, HCMC. Window of opportunity for comic books One of the leading comic illustrators in Viet Nam, Ta Huy Long, critic Pham Xuan Nguyen and writer Truong Quy will hold a discussion on the 82-page colour comic book Cua So (Window) of the illustrator, which was published late last year. Ta Huy Long, born in 1974, is an illustrator of children's books, including De Men Phieu Luu Ky (Diary of a Cricket), Su Tich Chu Cuoi Cung Trang (A Legend of Cuoi and the Moon) and Lich Su Viet Nam Bang Tranh (A Painting Book of Viet Nam History). Cua So is a diary of paintings telling the story of a 10-year-old boy's dream in Ha Noi's Old Quarter in the 1980s when electric trams were still ratling on the streets and bicycles were everywhere. "The mischievous, ambiguous paintings which bear the metaphor of re-birth and life transformation, flashing by as fast as a dream in their busy lives, takes readers to a familiar Ha Noi as it was a few decades ago," says a press release of the publisher Nha Nam Culture and Communication JSC. The round-table discussion, Window – A Strange Look on Familiar Ha Noi, is set to take place at L'Espace, 24 Trang Tien Street, Ha Noi from 6pm today. Da Nang airs classic drama on Sunday Da Nang's Nguyen Hien Dinh Theatre will hold its first outdoor night performance of tuong (classic drama) on Sunday. Artists from the theatre will tell tourists how to make up for a tuong character. Visitors will also be invited to try on a costume and take photos. Last month, Tuong Xu Quang (Quang Nam's classic drama) was recognised as part of the National Intangible Heritage. The city has a collection of 204 classical tuong scripts, written in Han (Chinese) and Vietnamese ideographic characters (Nom), and published between 1802-45. Choir Festival to celebrate anniversary of revolution The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism in co-operation with the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union has launched the Choir Festival 2015 as part of cultural activities to celebrate the 70th anniversary of August Revolution (August 19, 1945) and National Day (September 2). The festival's theme, Songs Are Offered to the Party, aimed to highlight revolutionary music in praise of the Communist Party of Viet Nam, President Ho Chi Minh and national heroes. Professional and amateur performers from art troupes, cultural centres, universities and colleges in HCM City and southern provinces are encouraged to join the event. The participants can choose different categories including mixed choir, male choir, female choir, children's and youth's choir. The festival is expected to open early August.  VNS/SGT/VNA