Exercises for Paradise
Nguyen Xuan Huy
The works of Nguyen Xuan Huy build bridges from the 21st to the 19th century. They react to the visual patterns of the present and at the same time possess the mastery of classical European painting. Nguyen's art takes up current issues and formulates haunting parables of extraordinary depth, complexity and virtuosity.
How is it that an artist born in Vietnam in 1976 moves like a fish in water in European art? Even as a child, Huy came across French art books from the Indochina period and tried his hand at copies after Géricault, Delacroix and Boucher. Soon he was drawing quick anatomical sketches, portraits and perspectives.
The young man came to Germany when he was seventeen, learned the language within a year and a half, got his Abitur and studied at the Burg Giebichenstein Art Academy in Halle and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux.
His first major works dealt with the more recent present in Vietnam, the war and the communist regime. Meanwhile, after the artist has spent more than half of his life in Europe, his new home Germany has come into focus. Our problems are just as serious, if less obvious.
Our exhibition focuses on three key works by the artist: "Close to Heaven" uses the simile of the Tower of Babel. It addresses hubris, filter bubbles and division. "The Passage" deals with the relation between thinking and ideological influence. “Exercises”, on the other hand, describes black and white thinking and the absurdity of political confrontations. The chessboard of power is about violence and shifting borders.
In the „Evasive Manoeuvre" Vermeer's "Girl reading a letter at the open window" and "The Matrix" combine to form a message that can still be read when its ingredients are forgotten.
In recent years, the artist has had solo presentations and participation in exhibitions at the Kunsthalle Darmstadt, the Mannheimer Kunstverein, the Kunstmuseum Jena, the Luxembourg Art Week, the Art Karlsruhe and the London Art Fair, the Haus am Lützowplatz in Berlin and other institutions.