Hey! To My Undisclosed Heart, the Rhyme
October 17 – November 29, 2026
Martin Constable
Opening Hours: 10:00 – 18:00, Tuesday – Sunday, or by appointment
Rare Sea – 3 Đặng Thị Nhu, Bến Thành Ward, Hồ Chí Minh City
Free admission
Hey! To My Undisclosed Heart, the Rhyme, the title proposed by Martin Constable for this exhibition, sounds like a line taken from a poem or an epic. On closer reading, it also brings together two aspects of his practice. The “undisclosed heart” points towards something inward that can only ever be partially expressed, while “rhyme” evokes the return of forms and meanings across time.
The phrase “undisclosed heart” recalls Hegel’s discussion of lyric poetry. He describes how feelings may be openly expressed, but may also approach silence, allowing us only to “surmise what is concentrated in his undisclosed heart.” The phrase suggests an inner state that becomes perceptible without being fully disclosed. This resonates strongly with Constable’s practice. He has long moved between the positions of artist and engineer. His engagement with technology and image construction gives his work an analytical precision, yet another aspect of his practice remains resistant to such dissection, preserving a poetic language within the paintings.
This tension runs through Constable’s practice in two different but connected ways. One emerges in his archaeology of civilization. He is drawn to the moment when structures begin to collapse, because destruction reveals how things were put together in the first place. Ruined architecture and damaged machines therefore become ways of examining the order created by civilization, while bringing previously hidden structures to the surface. The other is closer to poetry. For Constable, rhyme resembles the rise and disappearance of something. Forms return, change and find echoes elsewhere. It also describes the moment when things that once seemed separate begin to acquire meaning through their relation to one another. His idea of “future history” follows a similar logic, allowing the past to reappear within an imagined future and making the boundary between the two increasingly unstable.
The titles of the works extend this poetic logic. Oil paintings depicting ruins, architecture and landscape, such as Of History, Remember Imagine and Forgotten, And Then… What Then? What Then? and What He Left Behind, all point towards histories in decline and what remains after an event has passed. Their titles read almost like the artist’s continuing inquiry into what remains over time, or questions addressed back to himself.
The lightbox series Leaving a Place for Another Place, Only To Find That the Place Has Followed You brings this sense of recurrence into a more intimate register. Departure is followed by an unexpected return. A place that has been left behind continues to follow through memory and image. The repeated format of the series reinforces this sense of return, recalling the artist’s own statement: “The human condition is best understood at autopsy: not as ‘what is?’ but as ‘what has been?’”
The later works turn more directly towards the individual. The Man Who Asked Why, For Gods Sake Look After Our People, and They Made Me Do It gradually turns towards the question of who acts, and under whose will. These titles seem to carry the same voice from one work to the next, like fragments of a longer utterance that is never completed.
The exhibition can be read as a monologue by Constable. Its poem-like titles allow meaning to accumulate through recurrence and resonance. Through these connections, which never fully close, we catch only a glimpse of the artist’s inner world. The story itself remains undisclosed, leaving its resonance to return again and again.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Martin Constable has exhibited widely in Europe and Asia. In 2000 he was nominated for the prestigous Sovereign Art Foundation prize. His clients include David Bowie, Elton John, Iggy Pop, Lord Gowrie (former Minister of the Arts, UK), Lord Croft, The Arts Council of Britain, Glaxo Smith Klien, The Rotary Club of Great Britain, JPMorgan Chase, UniCredit group and Deutsche Bank.
As an art teacher, his former students include many of South East Asia’s most renowed artists: Charles Lim, Guo-Liang Tan, Sara Choo, Donna Ong, Nobuo Yoda, Woon Tien Wei, Vincent Leong, Marla Bendini, Kelvin Atmadibrata, Yanyun Chen, Pan Huiting and Lavender Chang.
In 2001 he gave up painting to work in a collaborative, ‘Grieve Perspective’ where he developed his skill with digital media.
He started painting again when he moved to Vietnam, where he used to work as the Head of the Digital Media program of RMIT, Vietnam. He also teaches visual effects and researches computational aesthetics in collaboration with computer engineers.
ABOUT THE CURATOR
Julian Chu is a curator who explores the creative motivations and sensibilities underlying artists’ work. Through in-depth interviews and close engagement with artists, she examines how artistic intentions are expressed through material choices and formal language. Drawing on her experience in archival research and studio management, she develops exhibitions, texts, and publications that trace an artist’s creative trajectory within broader historical and cultural contexts.
She has collaborated with Wu Chi-Tsung, Tsai & Yoshikawa, Wang Yahui, Nick Dong, and Su Meng-Hung as their studio manager . Her international exhibition experience includes Wu Chi-Tsung’s Far from East at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, Germany (2017); jing-atmospheres at the Sean Kelly Gallery in New York, USA (2021); Nick Dong: 11 to 88 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, USA (2024); and Su Meng-Hung’s Desolate Landscape on the Golden Screens at Art Basel Unlimited in Basel, Switzerland (2025), alongside exhibitions in Taipei, Hong Kong, and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. She previously served as Office Manager of the Asian Cultural Council Taipei Office.