“I paint with industry and cleverness as a mason’s laborer but also with the pleasure and indulgence of a little boy who dips his hands into the sand on the beach to build his own palace. I, too, have an extreme deep longing for dipping my hands in the material I use to paint: trowel and brush are not enough for me.”
Read MoreNguyen Trung’s poignant techniques for handling paint suggest the influence of his years in Paris, but overall his creations express his intellectual involvement with Buddhism, as can be noted from many of the titles of his paintings. From Khmer temples to family homes, Trung considers the living connections of humans and their dwellings, and represents in his creations the weathered strength of Asian buildings. His well worked, scratched and textured compositions, frequently monochrome, often resemble old walls or temple ruins. “I believe that the house where we are living is a connection from generation to generation. We can’t see the people who have lived or have died there but something is present to make the house, though old and dilapidated as it is, become vital, full of breath. You see traces of time, traces of previous tenants. Time and man have made them like that,” he says.
A leading figure in Vietnam’s abstract art movement, Nguyen Trung is one of the country’s most respected contemporary artists, with a long career of innovative artistic experimentation rewarding him such status.
