Thu Nguyen - La Salle Hotel

La Salle Hotel
- Thu Nguyen -

Is this art giving the illusion of reality, or reality giving the illusion of art? Maybe the video creates this magic.

I'm thinking again at the Niebuhr model: image and reality in paradox. Or maybe this time they are in sync: reality agreeing with the image; image revealing the unseen, reality following the image, discovering in itself what image has revealed.

(Contemporary Art)

(Niebuhr)

The Kids of Thu Nguyen

- Thu Nguyen -

She's working now on her most recent painting: La Salle Hotel. A very sensible artist, in love for those moments when colors enjoy dancing, over the flowers in the garden, among the clouds, on the water and over the ships in harbors, or in the windows, of shops or of homes. Or when someone is sleeping and colors start dancing over the body. This is Thu Nguyen.

And here are her kids.


(Contemporary Art)

Thu Nguyen - May Morning Arkansas River

Thu Nguyen: May Morning Arkansas River # 2
oil on panel
(video by Thu Nguyen)

Thu Nguyen is working on a series of figure paintings of herself, exploring how her varying emotional states can be captured.

She is looking for the responses generated with different lighting and environments.

Is it this or rather the opposite? As she is turned with the back to us, is it not about the environment? I mean, about the emotional states generated by the environment in the viewer? In this case, she is the Sprecher, the Mediator, the point that concentrates the energies of the environment, and ours.

(Contemporary Art)

The Hours of Thu Nguyen

- Thu Nguyen -

(Contemporary Art)

Thu Nguyen - An Evening in Juneau, Alaska

Thu Nguyen - An Evening in Juneau, Alaska
oil on oak panel

Thu Nguyen has a special feeling that allows her to get the sense of a moment of time, in a quiet play of lights and shadows.

And it is more here. It's an ambiguity, on purpose, suggesting a story: the beginning of a romance, for a night, drowned later, maybe, in drunkenness... or a farewell party in some place there, everybody's happy at the start... and the sky in the distance, like a Fata Morgana...

(Contemporary Art)

Thu Nguyen - Midnight in the Garden

Thu Nguyen - Midnight in the Garden, 2007
oil on panel

Thu Nguyen says she dislikes the idea that the concept behind the piece of art could be considered more important than the visual experience.

It is interesting that there is an aspect in her art similar to some Conceptual artists (like Jan Dibbets): the importance she gives to mark the hours.

But, let's be clear, here stops any similarity with Conceptualists: they are interested to mark the time, she is interested to discover the way luminosity manifests itself at various moments of time, the way the dialog runs between light and shadows at different hours of night, of morning, of afternoon, the way light signals its presence through the play of reflections.



(Contemporary Art)

Thu Nguyen - Houseboat on the Seine

Thu Nguyen - Houseboat on the Seine, 2004
oil on masonite

...Enfin Malherbe vint...

One of the movies of Hou Hsiao-Hsien (Le Voyage du Ballon Rouge) revealed to me a Paris filtered through Asian sensibility. I should say it differently: an Asian artist can notice in the Parisian mosaic things that we others have forgotten, or don't notice, or don't care any more, a subtle warmth, a subtle charm, a subtle color; the Taiwanese artist was discovering for me the small things that make le Paris de toujours.

And here comes Thu Nguyen, to explore these small things through her Asian lens: the warmth, the charm, the color.





(Contemporary Art)

Thu Nguyen - 3:30 AM

Thu Nguyen - 3:30AM, 2008
oil on panel

It gives you the diaphanous sensation of seeing a flying being.

(Contemporary Art)

Thu Nguyen - Last Fall in Monroe

Thu Nguyen - Last Fall in Monroe, 2007
oil on bass panel

Says Thu Nguyen, painting is first and foremost a visual-aesthetic experience; what I dislike in some contemporary art is the notion that the concept behind the piece is more important than the visual experience gained from the piece.

(Contemporary Art)

Thu Nguyen - Beijing in August

(video by Thu Nguyen)

Thu Nguyen was born in Saigon and she got through the whole drama of immigration, like so many of her generation. She lives now in US, at Cabot, Arkansas.

Thu is painting mostly oil on panel. Says she, I prefer to not have an artistic statement, for my works are painters' paintings.

I will come back with more of her paintings on the blog: she has, I believe, that special Asian delicacy and pathos; look at this Beijing in August and you'll understand. I said pathos; maybe it's better to say wizardry. I'm thinking at that special Chinese movie from 1948, Spring in a Small Town. It's that mix of delicacy and pathos: pathos that is controlled by the Asian restraint, but it's there; and the artist has to be an wizard to master the mix. This is what I feel in the works of Thu Nguyen.

(Contemporary Art)