Kenny Nguyen, Utopia #2, Acrylic and Ink on Paper, 48 x 135 inches
CURRENT EXHIBITION
2016 North Carolina Artist Exhibition
2016 North Carolina Artist Exhibition
'Seeking the Best of North Carolina Creativity'
Opening Reception: March 6th, from 4:00 - 6:30 pm
Exhibition dates: March 6th -April 28, 2016
Location: Betty McCain Gallery, Duke Energy Center for Performing Art, Raleigh, NC.
Juror: Bradley Sumrall
About the Juror:
'Bradley Sumrall is Chief Curator and Collections Manager of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans. The Ogden Museum is one of the leading museums in the United States focusing on the richness and diversity of art of the American South and houses the largest and most comprehensive assemblage of Southern art in the world from 1733 to the present.'
Opening Reception: March 6th, from 4:00 - 6:30 pm
Exhibition dates: March 6th -April 28, 2016
Location: Betty McCain Gallery, Duke Energy Center for Performing Art, Raleigh, NC.
Juror: Bradley Sumrall
About the Juror:
'Bradley Sumrall is Chief Curator and Collections Manager of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans. The Ogden Museum is one of the leading museums in the United States focusing on the richness and diversity of art of the American South and houses the largest and most comprehensive assemblage of Southern art in the world from 1733 to the present.'
2016 Juror's Choice Award, Suspended Dream, Mixed media on canvas, 36 x 48 inches
CURRENT EXHIBITION
First LaGrange Southeast Regional Exhibition Opening Reception: February 19, from 7-9 pm Exhibition dates: February 19-April 2, 2016 Location: LaGrange Art Museum, GA About the exhibit: The 1st LaGrange Southeast Regional features an extraordinary, rich body of art work selected from over 400 works submitted by almost 150 artists representing our twelve-state Southeastern United States. It celebrates the rich legacy of talent within our region, provides the citizens access to current artistic practice, and offers l artists exhibition opportunities and purchase possibilities. The Art Museum collects and presents contemporary art by emerging and established artists with an emphasis on regional artists as well as outsider and folk artists from the lower Chattahoochee Trace; the Regional affords the LaGrange Art Museum a means for increasing its permanent holdings through Purchase Awards. Sponsored by the Callaway Foundation and the LaGrange Art Museum with special support provided by the Charlie & Joy Flint Fund. Sources: www.lagrangenews.com Please visit the Museum website for more information : www.lagrangeartmuseum.org |
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PAST EXHIBITIONGENERATIONS: FORTY HUES BETWEEN BLACK AND WHITEExhibition Dates: December 5 - 19, 2015
Location: OCCCA and VAALA Cultural Center, CA About the exhibit: This year marks the fortieth anniversary of the beginning of the exodus of over a million Vietnamese people to other countries for political, economic, and other reasons following the end of the Vietnam conflict. For some, the irrevocable changes that accompanied the conflict’s end resulted in the loss of a way of life. For others, it ushered in new beginnings. And for many, both were equally true. This exhibition aims to present a survey of the thematic concerns of artists of Vietnamese heritage AND artists inspired by Vietnam over the past forty years. Themes such as change, displacement, identity, and memory are particularly relevant. By presenting many “hues” of artworks, we hope to express the multiplicity of generations of artists and viewpoints, and to counter black-or-white, good-or-bad judgment and politics. Works of art produced in any media since 1975 will be considered. Link to Gallery Website: http://www.occca.org/EXHIBITIONS.html#generations |
Quoctrung Nguyen, Behind the Stage. acrylic on silk
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MISExhibition Dates: November 9 - 15, 2015
Location: Rowe Gallery, UNC Charlotte, North carolina |
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MIS Exhibition, 2015, Rowe Art Gallery, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte NC.
EXPLORATION OF IDENTITY AND CULTURAL DISPLACEMENT
Kenny Nguyen, 2015, No.1 (Dreamland Series), Mixed media on paper, 26 x 18 inches.
2015 Project | Painting | Mixed Media
Artist Statement
My work explores identity and cultural displacement using my own history as a vehicle. Being an immigrant, I have experienced the shocking change of living space and environment directly effecting my life. This transition left me ‘homeless’; though living in a house, I couldn’t find my comfort zone. I felt isolated from the new cultural environment and even from my own cultural roots due to distance and cultural differences. I am attempting to express the ‘true selves’ on a two-dimensional surface, as my paintings are an imaginary place where I explore and define myself without any limits. That imaginary place is also where the cultures come together and interweave, merge, and sometime clash.
I explore the relationship between individual and community, raising a larger concern about identity, which is important to everyone. I investigate identity as a means to finding the balance between cultural beliefs and values in life. I want to explore how my identity and culture develops over a lifetime. At least at this moment, after five years since moving away from my motherland, I interpret myself as a by-product of two cultures.
Moving away from representation, becoming purely abstraction, I created a transitional zone in which contains most of my emotions housing the metaphor for my identity. Figurative images are removed and replaced by the blank canvas suggest the idea of visible and invisible, everything and nothing. My pallet is limited to a range of value, large amount of black and white. There are no clear boundaries between them, blending, merging and fading into each other.
My paintings connect memory and reality, traditional and contemporary. I incorporate the transparent silk as a traditional material to replace the canvas, inspired by the unusual orientation and format of historic Chinese wall painting. I carry into my studio practice traditional Eastern ink wash painting and calligraphy. Each of the brushstroke is not simply to reproduce the appearance of form and texture, but to capture the unseen and the spirit.
Artist Statement
My work explores identity and cultural displacement using my own history as a vehicle. Being an immigrant, I have experienced the shocking change of living space and environment directly effecting my life. This transition left me ‘homeless’; though living in a house, I couldn’t find my comfort zone. I felt isolated from the new cultural environment and even from my own cultural roots due to distance and cultural differences. I am attempting to express the ‘true selves’ on a two-dimensional surface, as my paintings are an imaginary place where I explore and define myself without any limits. That imaginary place is also where the cultures come together and interweave, merge, and sometime clash.
I explore the relationship between individual and community, raising a larger concern about identity, which is important to everyone. I investigate identity as a means to finding the balance between cultural beliefs and values in life. I want to explore how my identity and culture develops over a lifetime. At least at this moment, after five years since moving away from my motherland, I interpret myself as a by-product of two cultures.
Moving away from representation, becoming purely abstraction, I created a transitional zone in which contains most of my emotions housing the metaphor for my identity. Figurative images are removed and replaced by the blank canvas suggest the idea of visible and invisible, everything and nothing. My pallet is limited to a range of value, large amount of black and white. There are no clear boundaries between them, blending, merging and fading into each other.
My paintings connect memory and reality, traditional and contemporary. I incorporate the transparent silk as a traditional material to replace the canvas, inspired by the unusual orientation and format of historic Chinese wall painting. I carry into my studio practice traditional Eastern ink wash painting and calligraphy. Each of the brushstroke is not simply to reproduce the appearance of form and texture, but to capture the unseen and the spirit.
Documentary photographs in progress work
PROJECT2015 | Painting | Mixed Media
“Sometimes it's easy to walk by because we know we can't change someone's whole life in a single afternoon. But what we fail to realize it that simple kindness can go a long way toward encouraging someone who is stuck in a desolate place.” [...] 'My work is based on research about the lives of homeless people. I’m exploring misconceptions and stereotypes of homelessness that are ingrained into our society.For each of my work, I created a character who represents homelessness. For example in ‘The invisible man’,a faceless figure is walking alone on the street. His body is overwhelmed by a bundle of trash and his belongings. These physical objects are not only connected to activities for living but also reflect a sense of over consumption. The character is mean to be a mysterious and ambiguous figure. I thought of him as a metaphor of fear, trouble and suffering. I try to convey the complexity of homeless situations through abstract images. Both my research and making the works have allowed me to think about homelessness in very different ways. Homelessness is the subject that artist need to do in a respectful and caring way. '
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