Nguyen Xuan Huy - TALKING ABOUT THE BLUE SKY

Opening with the artist on Saturday, February 7, 2015, at 9 PM

Nguyen Xuan Huy paints and draws with virtuosity. On this academic cushion, the artist could comfortably rest—but he chooses not to. This makes his works challenging and exciting.

His home country, post-communist Vietnam, is depicted by Nguyen as a Dionysian procession, with protagonists naked and deformed by the genetic poison Agent Orange, succumbing to the intoxication of new turbo-capitalism. The scenes of the large-format canvases skillfully reference art history: Goya, Bosch, and Botticelli receive unexpected reinterpretations.

After nearly two decades in Germany, the artist has mentally arrived in his second homeland. His new paintings are no less drastic than his Asian panels, but they are more layered and reduced to a European format. Dark landscapes and desolate interiors have replaced the formerly white backgrounds. The figures often seem to pose alone in front of webcams, engrossed in communication with machines. Nguyen Xuan Huy paints women with fused tongues, torn-out hearts, as hybrids and targets, splayed and exposed.

Art historical references are rare—who still understands them? It seems as if a new dark age has dawned. Nguyen's female figures have always been interpreted as allegories of civilization. For the first time, men also appear. A portent?

Nguyen Xuan Huy was born in 1976 in Hanoi. He studied at the Hanoi University of Architecture, at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Bordeaux, and earned his painting diploma in 2003 from HfKD Burg Giebichenstein. He worked at the Vermont Studio Center and is a recipient of international art awards.