Black Painting No. 52
2008 - Painting (Painting)
130 x 110cm
Nguyen Thai Tuan
In the “Black Paintings” series, although the human body is only suggested, it plays an important role. Some body parts are absent, mostly the faces which are usually an affirmation of the individual. The characters recall ghosts testifying as to the traumas of war. They evoke the absence of oneself, corporal dispossession but also the story of a society still under authoritarian power. In this way, the absence of faces symbolically refers to censorship. The painted characters are overall described in a typology: the only thing we know is if they are men or women; monks, prisoners, or soldiers. The monochrome background accentuates the theatrical aspect of the composition that stages puppets and ghosts. Some of the paintings seem to develop a narration that is left pending, incomplete. Photography is a manifest reference in the series: testimony to what has occurred, inexorably related to death, absence and loss. The black or dark background creates a space where memory can arise, a space where the stories still need to be written; but also a negative space. “Obscurity always reveals mystery and the unknown. Obscurity forces us to search further and look for the truth, but also creates fear and violence” (Nguyen Thai Tuan).
Nguyen Thai Tuan was born in 1965, he studied at the school of Fine Arts of Hue where he studied propaganda art, which he got bored of very quickly. He is one of the most important Vietnamese artists of his generation that remained and worked in his country, while many other artists were trained in the United States. His work questions the history and fragility of humanist values and the affirmation of subjectivity in opposition to political power. He produced several series of paintings, among which is Heritage that shows in the background buildings and monuments related to Vietnamese history. He seeks to portray a critical space between the past and the present.
Colors:
Related works sharing similar palette
© » KADIST
Prajakta Potnis
2020he woke up with seeds in his lungs by Prajakta Potnis is a set of x-ray films presented through backlit light boxes of found objects constructed to evoke the body or organs that turns the host into a foreign element...
© » SLASH PARIS
Martha Wilson — Invisible, Works on Aging (1972-2022) — Frac Sud, Cité de l’art contemporain — Exposition — Slash Paris Connexion Newsletter Twitter Facebook Martha Wilson — Invisible, Works on Aging (1972-2022) — Frac Sud, Cité de l’art contemporain — Exposition — Slash Paris Français English Accueil Événements Artistes Lieux Magazine Vidéos Retour Martha Wilson — Invisible, Works on Aging (1972-2022) Exposition Photographie Martha Wilson, Beastly + Beauty, 1974 et 2009 Photographies noir et blanc, texte, 43,2 × 59,7 cm, édition de 3 © DR Martha Wilson Invisible, Works on Aging (1972-2022) Encore 7 mois : 1 juillet 2023 → 4 février 2024 Le Frac Sud — Cité de l’Art Contemporain est heureux de consacrer, après Martha Wilson in Halifax: 1972-1974 au Centre Pompidou en 2021, sa première exposition monographique d’envergure en France à Martha Wilson, figure pionnière et tutélaire des engagements féministes au travers de l’art rerprésentée par la galerie michèle Didier...
© » KADIST
The Sable Eye with Ryanaustin Dennis, in partnership with Canyon Cinema Wednesday, June 6, Bar 6pm, Event 7pm, with works on view through June 9 Screening of Robert Nelson, Oh Dem Watermelons , 1965, 11 minutes, 16mm and Cauleen Smith, Chronicles of a Lying Spirit (by Kelly Gabron), 1992, 6 minutes, 16mm...
© » SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
Why these ephemeral clay artworks by ceramicist Ruth Ju-shih Li will crumble in front of your eyes | South China Morning Post Advertisement Advertisement Art + FOLLOW Get more with my NEWS A personalised news feed of stories that matter to you Learn more Taiwanese-Australian ceramicist Ruth Ju-shih Li installs an ephemeral clay artwork at the New Taipei City Yingge Ceramics Museum, in Taiwan, in 2019...
© » KADIST
Robert Zhao Renhui
2012Expedition #46 is a work from the series “The Glacier Study Group,” which consists of artists, scientists, activists, and enthusiasts of glacial and polar activity in the Artic Circle to conduct scientific investigation, data collection, and glacier sampling...
© » KADIST
Arabella Campbell
2011In Gradation (2011), nine raspberries lined up on a lichen-dotted rock progress from left to right, dark to light, plump and juicy to not-yet-ripe...
© » KADIST
Dread Scott
2022In conjunction with his first NFT sale of White Male Dread Scott made and circulated a poster titled Whites For Sale ...
© » FAD MAGAZINE
Anna Uddenberg first ever film to premiere in the United States to audiences online this December - FAD Magazine Skip to content By Mark Westall • 29 November 2023 Share — Black Cube Nomadic Art Museum has announced the debut of Useless Sacrifice , a short film created by renowned international Berlin-based Swedish artist Anna Uddenberg...
© » KADIST
Amalia Pica
2013Memorial for intersections #2 (2013) is a minimalist, black metallic structure that contains the brightly colored translucent circles, triangles, rectangles, and squares that originally were presented in Pica’s performance work A ? B ? C (2013)...
© » KADIST
Birender Kumar Yadav
2015Birender Kumar Yadav comes from Dhanbad, India, a city built on its proximity of iron ore and coal and once forested and inhabited by Indigenous people who compose the Gondwana...
© » ANOTHER
The West Hollywood Artist Who Immortalised LA’s Golden Boys | AnOther A new exhibition in New York showcases the work of Kenneth Kendall, an artist who sculpted James Dean, Marlon Brando and more in the bohemian atmosphere of late 20th-century Los Angeles February 06, 2024 Text Miss Rosen Back in the 1950s, Hollywood’s fabled Melrose Avenue was still a sleepy street home to cabinetmakers and print shops catering to the local community...
© » TWOCOATSOFPAINT
Afire: Christian Petzold’s combustible feast – Two Coats of Paint Afire (directed by Christian Petzold), 2023, Leon on the beach (Thomas Schubert) , courtesy of Janus Films Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Instability hovers on several fronts – environmental, political, economic – and German filmmaker Christian Petzold manifests his concern about it with remarkable astuteness...
