HÀ NỘI — After a short period setting up his studio at Manzi, American print and performance artist Sto Len will open it to visitors starting on Saturday to observe his practice, have a chat, get their own hands dirty and see his latest body of work produced both in Hà Nội and New York.

Sto captures ’unexpected moments of beauty’ in the form of monoprints that use Japanese suminagashi (floating ink) marbling methods that he has tweaked over the last years to fit his own practice. Under his method, much is left to chance, and the process of going with the flow and seeing what happens is an essential 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. He then lets all of it stew, waits, plays with the result, 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.

In Việt Nam, Sto will continue his recent craft of printing on old maps and posters – a ‘collaboration’ that unsettles the seeming rigidity and authority of cartography and official information.

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.

On Sunday, Sto Len will conduct a workshop on monoprints for children.

His studio will be open to public until October 21 at 14 Phan Huy Ích Street. Free entry. — VNS