Exhibition dates: 25 July – 31 July 2023, 8:30 AM – 5:00 PM
Venue: Vietnam National Museum of Fine Arts
66 Nguyễn Thái Học, Ba Đình, Hanoi.
Tongla Art is pleased to present the 4th solo exhibition of artist Nguyễn Ngọc Phương entitled ‘CÁI ĐẦU’ (Heafod), featuring a series of 19 works.
Nguyễn Ngọc-Phương, born in 1975 (Hanoi), is a renowned Vietnamese artist. He holds a BFA from the Hanoi University of Industrial Arts and an MFA from the Vietnam University of Fine Arts. He has had three solo exhibitions at Vietnam National Museum of Fine Arts in 2018 and 2021, ‘Ngày thứ 49’ (The Day Numbered 49) – Part One & Two, ‘NIỆM’ (Conception), respectively. His works were featured for exhibitions in a number of galleries and museums in Southeast Asia and Vietnam, including Yogja Gallery, (Yogyakarta, Indonesia), Penang State Art Gallery (Penang, Malaysia), and other Artist Collectives in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam.
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Nguyen Ngoc Phuong is known for his unique style and strong strokes that showcase an explosion of his inner self. In his art, he often breaks the barriers of styles, materials or schools to achieve absolute freedom in art. No longer bound by theory or artistic expression, he has succeeded in creating a unique and personal world.
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The fourth solo exhibition by Nguyễn Ngọc Phương, ‘CÁI ĐẦU’ (Heafod), features 19 of his latest artworks. Seeking truth beyond the visible and the tangible, Phương offers profound perspectives on our social consciousness as determined and reflected by our social being, through his own interpretation of a completely new medium that has never existed before. His works give viewers many aspects to think about.
“More than 10 years of making the ‘CÁI ĐẦU’ (Heafod) series – is a re-enactment of the obsession in my mind about humanity”, as his own words in the exhibition statement.
In the exhibition introduction, renowned artist Lý Trực Sơn wrote: “In Nguyễn Ngọc Phương’s works, the viewer often encounters something completely different from the usual artistic structure of the rest; the works are the place where this artist plunges into the explosions and chaos of visual elements and then tries to define a kinetic order for them, Nguyễn Ngọc-Phương’s “CÁI ĐẦU/Heafod” refers to another realm where the silent contemplation/recollection has gathered and reshaped all the disjointed elements that make up his own definition of a ‘face’. However, I see in his paintings that the energy of the hidden is so intense that it distorts the form of what it hides.”
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In the ‘CÁI ĐẦU’ (Heafod) series, Nguyễn Ngọc Phương’s improvised techniques on lacquer panel and/or wood slab are the use of very low-relief-like dense field of dark colour applied in vigorous painterly portions, accompanied by intangible linear or non-linear contours and humanoid silhouettes of obsessive simulacra on gray blurred backgrounds, while the headlike forms seem to be floated at random, longingly.
One of the interesting stages in his art-making process is the way he casts/executes within the limits of a slab of wood the relationship between forms occupying an unknown space. It seems that his energy is liquidized and meant to be casted/mixed or poured and then hardened into the crude forms or inchoate faces, which are covered with ‘collective unconscious’ scratches and/or scar tissues. Then a second entry is occurred for the headlike forms in the making, but soon to be remelted along with his high energy particles and subsequently recast on the substrate of the fiberboard for producing the superemeinent body of works. His characteristics and abilities in these improvised techniques are just like an excessively high temperature in casting or alchemy, resonating through the oppressiveness of long and intertwined anachronisms and juxtapositions of the chaotic unwinding of a theatre state. Finally, something extraordinary defines, but soon explodes as his art dissolves into a ‘writhing avalanche of thrills’.
His mastery of the use of many different ‘found materials’ (gilding material, hard-medium-soft rock deposits, talus deposits, unconsolidated colluvial soil, soft or loose soil, sand, gravel, selected dry roots, debris from broken wall and other ‘found materials’) with lacquers that are pressed, thrown, and pounded to express his inner impulse toward art. In the art-making process of this particular human being, his characteristics and abilities are unique and therefore sui generis.
“Nguyễn Ngọc Phương always strives to renew himself and is aware of mastering techniques using artistic expression and bold choice of materials. His series of works this time is a breakthrough creation, as we no longer see the influence of any art masters. This is not a small challenge that few artists can overcome. This exhibition is a special result of his 20 years of research and creativity” said Mrs. Tuyết Nguyễn, Founder of Tongla Art.
ABOUT TONGLA ART:
TONGLA ART is a new platform specializing in art space and in the organization of exhibitions for domestic and foreign artists, founded by Mrs. Tuyết Nguyễn, a respected businesswoman in the entrepreneurial/business community and she is also an art aficionado. With a diversity of talented artists, rich cultural heritage combined with our high level of expertise and effective management, our mission is to introduce Vietnamese art on a global scale.
Expecting to promote the development and success of contemporary art in Vietnam, TONGLA ART provides artists with the resources and support they need to create quality works, as well as art services, including art management, art exchange, and promotion of the works in the art industry and with different cultures.
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