Land of the Sleepwalker 05, 2017

Nguyen The Hung  

Cubist Painting with Golds, Pinks, Blacks & Blues

‘Land of the Sleepwalker 05’ is a large horizontal contemporary lacquer on wood panel “abstract figurative” painting created by Vietnamese artist Nguyen The Hung in 2017. Featuring a palette made of a variety of colors such as brown, red, black, yellow, blue and green accentuated with gold leaf, the painting presents a format that has a faux-air of Guernica revised by Miró. Painted on a dotted ground, two characters walk among a variety of creatures. We are in the land of the sleepwalker after all…

Curves are perfectly balanced by straight lines; light browns oppose themselves to blacks and petite fluffy clouds seem to be falling on the ground. Colorful wandering clouds in Hung’s works are inspired by traditional cloud ornaments from Vietnam’s ancient citadels and temples. Those ancient ornaments act like a negative version of clouds wandering throughout the space of the pieces. They link together to create a limbo world, where matters become vague and surreal. Another level lies underneath, hiding deep below the clouds the artist has created realms of consciousness and thoughts. Hung, joyful and relaxed, plays around with his dots. Silver dots, golden dots, together they light up the atmosphere to create a passive aura.

Ornamental clouds, or simply just dots, they move from one shape to another, unsettled trying to find a logical order for themselves to fit in therefore challenging viewers’ senses. The order of signs creates spaces of uncertainties and invalidities, where the artist’s stories would be tied together and unfold. Silently, the artist submerges himself into an imaginative valley with no boundaries of shapes, strokes, and of random visual connections. The dreamy artist tries to hold on to his childhood memories, from straw scarecrows, late afternoon birds, handmade kites, boys looking after horses in mountain areas, to stories about men, women and children, whispers of surrounding nature seemingly sprouting.