Grace Lewis - AsiaLIFE Magazine

Abstract artist Nguyen Trung
observes Saigon with a keen eye,
taking in every nuance, then reflecting
the city’s essence back through his
paintings. Beth Young visits his
studio. Photos by Huynh Ho Quang.
In 1959, Nguyen Trung, then 19, created his
first artwork. It was a figurative painting
that depicted Saigon. A touch over five
decades later, the city still features heavily
in his art and in particular served as the
inspiration for his latest body of work
“Grey White Black”. Using only the three
colours, Trung sought to translate his personal
observations of Saigon on to canvas
plus a sense of nostalgia for another city he
loves—Paris.
While the darker shades represent HCM
City and what Trung calls its “graffiti”—the
marks and scratches etched into the walls
of old buildings and weathered alleyways,
the white symbolises the snow he first
saw in France. “It left a great impression
on me,” he says, adding that the memory
was triggered when a friend from the US
sent a photograph of an American winter
wonderland.
This image was the impetus for “Grey
White Black” and also signalled the end of
a six-year absence from the public sphere
since his last exhibition “Blackboard”. The
reason for the break: a complete lack of
inspiration. But with a whisper of the past
Trung’s passion was restored and the city
again became his muse.
To communicate its frantic energy Trung
uses atypical tools. Paintbrushes the size
of small brooms line a patch of wall in his
crowded studio along with a selection of
rollers. A plastic container of rusty nails
and an antique porcelain bowl filled with
corks lie among the countless tubes of
acrylic paint. According to Trung, they can
“Using my hands to paint gives
me freedom to express myself.”
all be used to create art. Still, his favourite
tools are his hands. When elbow-deep in a
project he says he can best express himself.
With a career spanning half a century
and punctuated by French colonial rule
and the American War, Trung has become
one of Vietnam’s most well-known and collectable
artists. His style has evolved over
the years, but the use of a subdued palette
has remained fairly constant. While he has
plans to use even less colour in the near future,
he predicts that one day he may inject
his work with shocks of red or yellow.
He does make one promise, though:
there will be no repeats. His work may
continue to tell a story of Saigon but that
tale will be reworked, taking on a totally
different aesthetic each time.
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