HÀ NỘI — A solo art exhibition titled Focus by the Romanian painter Sergiu Moise is being held in Hà Nội, showing 30 paintings created during his last five years living in Việt Nam.

Moise experimented with Vietnamese traditional paining techniques such as lacquer, silk and oil on canvas. He painted images of daily life and portraits.

The title of the exhibition, Focus, is the name of one of the oil on canvas works.

Focus (40cm by 50cm) is about the artist’s struggles with an attention deficit, which makes it difficult to focus and organise daily activities.

“Frequent mood swings and low tolerance for frustration are quite challenging when I have to sit down and work,” he said.

“I have to put a lot of efforts into concentrating and to struggle to maintain interest in certain tasks in order to complete them. This exhibition is the result of many struggles like that.”

Moise was born and grew up in Bucharest, Romania. After graduating from Bucharest’s Fine Arts high school Nicolae Tonitza, he received a scholarship and came to Việt Nam to learn painting. After studying for five years at the Việt Nam University of Fine Arts in Hà Nội, he graduated and got his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 2015. Since then he has continued living and working in Hà Nội.

The current exhibition is his first personal exhibition. It displays works done in the last five years in a variety of styles and techniques.

“I have always liked to try and experiment with different techniques. I had the opportunities to learn Vietnamese traditional fine arts such as lacquer and silk paintings as well as printmaking.”

“The subject of my works vary from daily life scenes, in the earlier works, to a more conceptual approach in the recent works,” he said.

“The technique that I mostly work in now is oil painting and the content of my works are mainly human figures that I use to express an idea—an idea that can be an emotion, a thought or a dilemma that the subject of the painting or myself are dealing with.”

The exhibition will run until July 20 at the Việt Nam University of Fine Art, 42 Yết Kiêu Street, Hà Nội. — VNS