How to describe the work of artist Hung Viet Nguyen? It exudes peace and yet it’s vibrant; it’s meditative and exciting; it pulses with color and texture while exploring natural beauty; it’s resonant of place, yet reminiscent of a world beyond and within our own.
Watching Nguyen’s work over the last decade, he’s evolved into an ever more masterful artist, while maintaining his sense of innocent wonder and sheer delight. Of course, there are darker moments in his work as well, but on the whole, this current body of work, Sacred Matter, now at Matter Gallery in mid-city, is an expression of pure joy. You cannot experience one of his highly detailed landscapes without feeling uplifted.
His latest two series, Sacred Landscape V and Sacred Landscape VI are filled with depth and longing, a pure and transformative travel to a location Nguyen has experienced and wishes to keep present in his heart – as well as that of the viewer.
The show is rich with lovely, fresh work, with pieces culled from Sacred Landscapes III and IV along with the more predominant, recent series. Among my favorites in this exhibition are “Sacred Landscape V #63,” in which a field of golden flowers in the foreground is balanced by what look like glacial mountains across an aqua body of water – a landscape that reminds me of Iceland; and the desert hills landscape behind another field of flowers, these in orange and dark red of “Sacred Landscape VI #5.”
Both may be favorites because they recall locations special to me, or it may be the contrast between floral blooms and rugged mountains.
The vast expanse of “Sacred Landscape V #57” dazzles with waterfalls, volcanos, ocean waters, glaciers, icy bays, flowering trees, a mysterious orange sky, and floating bits of pink clouds.
This is a painting a viewer could study for days, immersing themselves in landscape and form, in the depths of the sea and waterfalls, finding the small, happy figures of swimming humans, watching the small ice masses bobbing on the more distant, obviously colder sea.
There are a number of “Gate” paintings within the works on display. The mosaic-like cavern entrance under a glowing, molten sky in “Gate #1, Sacred Landscape VI #7” in one such work; a diminutive but powerful 12” by 12.” “Gate #3 Sacred Landscape VI #11” is a considerably larger canvas, with the moon rising behind the gate against a blue-black night sky, and the hills around the gate revealing ribbons of streams and rivers traversing their sides. “Gate #2, Sacred Landscape VI #10, “with the large, scored boulders on either side of it, feels most like a portal, to another dimension, or a new view of our own, or perhaps, a celestial paradise. The gate may be narrow, but strive to enter here.
Newer among Nguyen’s subject matter are night skies, and one stellar example here is the star-speckled navy-black sky reflecting into a far lighter blue, crystalline pool in (first of two images, below) “Sacred Landscape V #22.” Both the stars and a large rock in the center of the water reflect into the clear depths, while the land around it looks like a quilted or mosaic landscape of plants or farms or colorful homes as if viewed from a great distance above. It is easy to sense a grand and peaceful view of our world as seen floating above it in the profound stillness – and yes, sacredness of Nguyen’s art.
Using a palette knife to build up and manipulate his use of oil paint into textures and patterns, Nguyen works spontaneously he says, and while his subjects – his sacred landscapes – may stay the same over time, the colors and compositions vary from bright to pastel, to grays and saturated. His movements and special techniques are evolving as does his palette.
And whatever direction his art may take, whether depicting drifting bits of fog, narrow crevices, or the pink downward curves of a vulvic-like volcano, Nguyen amazes and enchants with a thrillingly original universe comprised of strange yet recognizable beauty.
The exhibition runs through April 2nd; artist talk at the gallery March 19, 2-4.
- Genie Davis; photos by Genie Davis