ART : A New Frame of Reference : Culture: Billed as the first West Coast showing of works by all-Vietnamese artists, Santa Monica gallery’s display aims to dispel traditional notions about Asian art.

Jean Concoff is hoping to shake up American sensibilities.

“I think if you mention Vietnamese art to most people, they expect something Oriental--Japanese calligraphy or Chinese scroll paintings,” she says. “That’s the whole point of this show. It’s not the regular thing. It’s different.”

The event is being billed as the first West Coast exhibition of modern Vietnamese art--on display in Concoff’s Main Street Gallery in Santa Monica--where she has featured mostly Japanese art for 25 years.

“It’s a combination of styles,” Concoff says. “The artists really don’t have a school they follow, other than being influenced by the French school.” (L’Ecole des Beaux Arts de L’Indochine trained a generation of painters throughout French Indochina in the 1920s.)

It was during one of her frequent buying trips to Hong Kong last year that Concoff met Judy Day and Shirley Hui, owners of the Galerie La Vong. “They go to Vietnam every year and buy paintings; they (exhibit) only Vietnamese art,” Concoff says. “They wanted to try to bring it to the United Sates--and I had an Asian gallery.”

Through a mutual friend in Los Angeles, Paula Fierman, the women joined forces, and in six months pulled the exhibition together.

The result is a 50-piece show by 13 native Vietnamese artists and one Vietnamese-American: Dao Thanh Dzuy, Tran Luu Hau, Pham Luan, Le Thanh Son, Nguyen Trung, Nguyen Than Binh, Trinh Cung, Nguyen Tu Nghiem, Tran Luong, Buu Chi, Tran Trung Tin, Dang Xuan Hoa, Nguyen Van Trung and Do Quang Em.

One of the country’s most prominent artists, photo-realist Em, traveled from Vietnam for the show’s opening last weekend. The journey marked his first visit to the United States.

Em, 54, the son and grandson of prize-winning Vietnamese photographers, studied photography from ages 6 to 17, and the family influence is apparent in his dark, striking work.

“All of the people I paint are my family,” says the artist, speaking through his 23-year-old son, Chris, who served as translator. “If I don’t love a person, I cannot paint them. Even a vase or a table: If I do not love it, I cannot paint it. All my work is based on happiness--in my life, in my mind.”

And he believes he communicates that feeling to viewers: “Whether my art is here or in Vietnam or any place, it doesn’t make any difference. The people are the same, the response is the same.”

A member of the influential Young Artists Assn. in the 1970s, Em won a National Cultural Award in 1971 from the South Vietnamese government. Last year, he and five other painters were featured in an exhibition in the Fine Arts Museum of Ho Chi Minh City.

Em makes his home in Ho Chi Minh City with his wife and two daughters (a third daughter lives in Germany), although he yearns to emigrate to America, where much of his extended family--including his brother, mother and only son--now live.

In 1976, the artist tried to flee Vietnam for America, but was caught and imprisoned for three years as punishment. He does not appear bitter.

“I don’t involve myself with politics, what they’re doing outside,” he says with a wave of his hand. “When I was in prison, they treated me well. They looked up to me as an artist.”

Gallery owner Concoff acknowledges that pulling the show together has been a logistical challenge, but credits the recently published memoirs of former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara for putting Vietnam back in the country’s consciousness--and making it a hot topic all over again.

Politics is not a theme in the exhibit, however.

“All of the artists have their own stories, of course, but the art itself is not political,” Concoff says. “In the United States, we don’t have one artistic style, and neither do they. But we’re bringing something here that’s completely unknown.”

The Main Street Gallery is at 208 Pier Ave. in Santa Monica. Gallery hours are 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday. The exhibition continues until June 21.