Water Flows Rock Erodes : October 2016 Manzi Art Space, 14 Phan Huy Ich, Hanoi, Vietnam

From late September, print and performance artist Sto Len will set up his studio at Manzi and open it to visitors to observe his practice, have a chat, get their own hands dirty and see his latest body of work produced both in Hanoi and New York.

Sto captures (un)expected moments of beauty in the form of monoprints following Japanese Suminagashi (floating ink) marbling methods which he has tweaked over the last years to fit his own practice in which much is left to chance and the process of going with the flow and seeing what happens is an intangible aspect of the finished pieces.

To create monoprints that will never be replicated in quite the same way, he prepares bodies of water from all kinds of sources, adds an assortment of paint and invites the surrounding space to add whatever speckles of dust, bugs or grit it can spare, lets all of it stew, waits, plays with the result, might wait some more and eventually places a piece of paper on the resulting surface to visually capture the collaboration of the artist with whatever space he is producing in.

Just as memories are given meaning in hindsight, Sto checks in with what he has picked out of the water to see what his catch of the day is and decide whether it was what he was hoping for.

In Vietnam Sto will be continuing his recent body of work of printing on old maps and posters – a ‘collaboration’ that unsettles the seeming rigidity and authority of cartography and official information. He will also be producing his ‘natural waste’ prints – having realised that he can employ his printing technique in the soiled waterways of New York he has been experimenting with pulling prints of poisonous beauty out of them and is looking to do the same in the many bodies of water in Hanoi and it’s surrounding

Visitors are invited to experience his creative process fully and to return multiple times to witness the body of work grow and see what worked and what didn’t.

Sto Len will take up residency at Manzi from late September and officially launch the Open Studio and display of his work on 1st of October at 18:30. An evening featuring the artist’s performance work is also planned, stay tuned for event details.

* The Vietnamese proverb “Nuoc Chay Da Mon”, which directly translates to “Water Flows Rock Erodes”, is employed both to encourage patience and a reminder that change is gradual, inevitable and happens through consistency upheld over a long period of time.