Nguyen Quang Minh
Biography
The attraction of shaping lovely charaters as dolls in Nguyen Quang Minh’s paintings is highlighted because of their features such as: small eyes, tails, willow leaves which make the viewers can not stop staring. The rural girls are oustanding with flexible moves such as: dancing, taking the flute or a bunch of flowers on their hands; these girls are gentle and elegant like urban girls or poetry and romantic like the faries in the folk stories. The background color in each painting always changes clearly, the color in the magic space – a non-contextual space but fulled of emtions. The artist’s brushstrokes show a lovely rebel combined with a smooth influence from folk drawings and illustration pictures to create a very unique “naïve” art style. Nguyen Quang Minh was born and grown up in the 70s of the twentieth century. Like the writers and artists of his generation, his childhood was linked to the rural life topic: the fields, the buffalos enjoyably and slowly eating the green grass, the green trees, the realistic landscapes and scenic in his mind. In particular, the sound of flutes are emphasized in many art works as a reminiscene in the endless world. Each time the viewers enjoy watching paintings of the artist Nguyen Quang Minh, it is also a chance for each person to see an imagine that has passed away but now maybe it has just stayed in our mind.
- HOW NGUYEN QUANG MINH DRAWS INNOCENCE
Article about the artist
Nguyen Quang Minh
NGUYEN QUANG MINH
Born in Hai Duong Province in 1970
Member of Hanoi Fine art Association
EDUCATION
2004 Master of Fine Art, Hanoi Fine Art University
1994 Graduate Diploma of Art, Hanoi Fine Art University
EXHIBITIONS
Selected solo exhibition
2005 Vietnamese Art Exhibition, Mebourne, Australia
1999 Mai Gallery, Hanoi
1996 Hoa Sen (Lotus) Gallery, Hanoi.
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITION
2010 Group exhibition in Singapore
2008 Group exhibition in Hanoi
2007 Group exhibition in Thailand
2006 Viet Land Hamorny, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
2005 Hanoi Fine Art, Hanoi
2003 Vietnam, Switzerland
2002 Sweden Embassy
CoDo (ancient capital) Gallery, Hue
2001 Avil Israel, Israel
2000 Contemporary Exhibition
1998 ASEAN Vietnam exbition, Hanoi Fine Art, Hanoi
1994 National wide student’s exhibition, Hanoi Fine Art, Hanoi
2016 “At the hind sight” exhibition at Green Palm gallery, Hanoi, Vietnam
Minh’s work is no child’s play
by Phan Cam Thuong
Nguyen Quang Minh’s work breathes innocence even when he wants to express mature philosophical thought.
Strictly speaking, his is a not style of painting, nor is it inspired by truly innocent ideas, rather it is a metaphor used by the artist to express his outlook on life in a candid, unsophisticated way
It is more a case of “children’s songs”-those incoherent free verses of buffalo boys, which often foretell major socio-historical events.
Born in 1970 in Hai Duong Province, Nguyen Quang Minh graduated from the Hanoi Fine Arts College in 1994 and is now teaching at the Center Music and Painting Teachers’ Training College.
However, what he was taught and indeed is now teaching has little to do with the painting style he has chosen. His imagery-women and children, flowers and grass, cows and buffalo-is rendered by generalised, linear figures in minimalistic way.
Unmindful of tense scenes and never bothering with describing events or minute detail, his work comes across a game, like children scribbling on the ground, with only the combination of fairly refined colours and use of shades testifying to the artist’s skill.
One thinks of Le Thiet Cuong or Pham Thang Long whose styles are not far from what we see here.
However, the ripeness of these two artists’ styles creates something quite different from the youthfulness and sub themes found in the works of Nguyen Quang Minh – who has no intention of circumscribing his painting with a truism.
