Thy Nguyên Truong Minh is a painter and drawer involved in artistic projects, which focus on multiculturalism.
He has a degree in Fine Arts, visual and spatial, from ERG (Ecole de Recherche Graphique, Brussels). Born in Brussels to Vietnamese parents, he later decided to live between Brussels and Ho Chi Minh City. Through his travels, and his education, which was ingrained with two cultures, he became interested in cities, their inhabitants, and the collective imagination that is contrived there.
He is also co-founder of La centrifugeuse | Máy xay sinh tố, an international art program involving art schools.
The artworks speak about the ongoing mutations in the expanding cities. They evoke situations, characters and urban landscapes, which sketch out a poetic portrait of the present. A motif, which often reappears in his work. These are dreamlike mosaics, where fragments of realistic everyday life are combined with surrealist narrative shifts. The artist is questioning urban mythology through his own experience of multiculturalism. Techniques may vary from black ink on rice paper, etching and engraving, acrylic and lacquer painting.
Lacquer painting is an old Asian art technique also known as sơn mài or urushi ウルシ.
The lacquer comes from dyed and dried sap of Toxicodendron vernicifluum or related tree, it is layered usually on wood and can be inlaid with various materials. This medium is well-known in Asia but not so well in Europe. During the Indochina era, lacquer painting started to be considered as an art discpline of its own, and that remains the case nowadays in Vietnam.
Using it in contemporary art allows binding between the old, the new and the different cultures. The artist experiments with this tool to create analogies within our hybrid worlds.
Thy Nguyên
Trương minh
Belgium - Brussels / Vietnam - Ho Chi Minh City
Facebook page : Thy - Artworks
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Instagram - thytruongminh