RED WALL Umeå in Hanoi | The Museum of Hanoi University of Fine Arts | Hanoi | Vietnam | 2003

Wrapped Red Tree, Indian ink on paper, 21 x 21 cm.

As part of the exhibition Umeå in Hanoi, at the Museum of Hanoi University of Fine Arts, we showed a series of graphic works (Redrum I - VIII) and a sound-installation.The sound was a mix between late at night street sounds and a famous traditional Vietnames folk song, played on a harmonica by Mr. Dang Tran Thi. Participants: Tryggve Lundberg, Micael Norberg, Marielle Nylander and Göta Svensson. Catalogue made by Nina Svensson.

There is a room. There is a window. For how long has it been this way? Of all the inventions of European art history, the central perspective is the most significant. An unsurpassed instrument to create illuory space, but also of major importance for technological developments. And consequently: for conquering the world. In the theories of Isaac Newton the "scientific perspective" of the Renaissance is elevated into a metaphysical issue, where the world-view of the Middle Ages, loaded with meaning and symbols, is finally replaced by an order where time and empty space are the only things we can take for granted. It goes without saying that a lot has happened since then, but our fundamental understanding of space remains pretty much the same.We still wake up and fall asleep in Newton's empty room. Then there are windows. Paul Cézanne was the first, after him, Western painting has engaged in a prolonged ideological confrontation with the central perspective. Some get their inspiration from African masks, some from Japanese woodcuts. Others from medieval icons, whose theological role was to create a "window" to the heavens. No empty space exists within the goldleaf of a saint's halo. Neither within Malevich's black square. There is a room. There is a window, which sometimes opens ever so slightly. Like a promise always unfulfilled. After all these confrontations we still wake up in the same room. Could it be that there is something wrong with the window? Can there be other ways? Like "painting" a tree with red bandages, very carefully, including every little branch. Like an act of envy or solidarity with those who live, not outside of, but beside the empty room. In 1994 Christina Eriksson Fredriksson and Christofer Fredriksson did precisely this, in a park in Umeå. Now, in Hanoi, this tree reappears - for the first time as far as I know. What has happened to it? What is about to take place? Mårten Arndtzén, Art Critic

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