For his first exhibition in Singapore, U.S.-based artist Kenny Nguyen (b. 1990, Ben Tre Province, Vietnam) presents new paintings inspired by recent travels in Vietnam. Nguyen is a new addition to Sundaram Tagore Gallery’s global roster of artists. He joined the gallery in March 2024 and Eruption is his debut solo exhibition.

Nguyen’s work transcends conventional boundaries, effortlessly navigating the intersection of tradition and innovation, painting and sculpture. It centers on ideas of cultural identity, displacement and integration.

The artist grew up on a coconut farm in a rural area near the Mekong Delta in southern Vietnam. Despite having an established career in fashion design, he decided to join his family when they moved to the United States in 2010. Acclimating to an American way of life proved uneasy at first, especially with a language barrier that intensified feelings of alienation and isolation. Nguyen turned to art-making as a coping mechanism and as a means to express himself in a more universal language. The transition from design to art was a natural one and in 2015 Nguyen earned a bachelor of fine arts degree in painting from the University of North Carolina Charlotte, and subsequently established a studio in Charlotte.

Drawing from his experience working with textiles, in particular, silk, a culturally significant material in Vietnam, Nguyen developed a distinctive technique to produce sensuous, three-dimensional works that he describes as “deconstructed paintings”. He begins by tearing swaths of silk fabric into hundreds of strips that he dips in acrylic paint and adheres to raw canvas. Methodically, almost meditatively, he repeats the process—tearing, painting, sanding, sewing, weaving, attaching, layering—until he has a structured but malleable medium, which he shapes into undulating, sculpted forms.

Nguyen’s paintings are often affixed to the wall with pushpins, allowing him the flexibility to reconfigure or reshape the composition as desired. The works can be stretched flat like a traditional canvas or draped, folded and creased into sculpted forms that ripple and unfurl along the wall. Each installation is unique.

In some ways, Nguyen’s process of deconstruction and reconstruction is analogous to the experience of growing into his identity as Vietnamese American and as an artist. His use of silk, which remains the primary material in his practice, has evolved alongside him. Where he once chose it for its splendor and sense of familiarity, through a rigorous process of transformation, it now holds greater meaning: “For me, silk has become the connector tying both cultures together”.

Exhibition highlights

The first of the two featured series, Encounters, is inspired by the artist’s recent experience returning to Vietnam for the first time since moving to America fifteen years ago and the ways in which it felt both familiar and alien.

The patterns derived from the strips of painted silk in this series are similar to what one might see in a woven textile, where the composition follows the orientation of the warp and weft. In some works, among the orderly columns of shifting complementary hues, there are moments of bold, contrasting color that catch the eye. But as you step back, the colors become more cohesive and the patterns read as variations in depth and dimension.

Conversely, the Eruption series is as dynamic and disruptive as Encounters is harmonious and composed. This series was also created upon Nguyen’s return from Vietnam, but unlike Encounters, which attempts to bring order to life’s disorder, Eruptions leans into the absence of order and predictability and marks a new direction in the artist’s approach.

The series is characterized by unrestrained color palettes and powerfully rhythmic arrangements that resemble high-frequency sound waves crashing into one another. For Nguyen, whose practice evolved from an intensely methodical process, Eruption is an opportunity to work in a more spontaneous way. “Everything is more dramatic and the colors, which shift and radiate in every direction, contribute in a different way”.

For these paintings, Nguyen brings together unexpected color pairings with intention. In comparison to earlier series, where pattern is formed through progressions of color that graduate from light to dark, here, the colors shift in random ways—not just in the overall composition, but within each painted strip of silk. The result is an almost pixelated effect that is charged with energy and movement.

The fluctuation between chaos and order in the two series isn’t accidental. “In a way, the paintings reveal who I am”, he says. “The way I construct them reflects what’s in my mind and how I want to present myself on the canvas. As I change the way I look at myself, the work also changes”.

However, even when he’s exploring new approaches in construction, color or composition, Nguyen doesn’t stray far from his creative foundation. “I want to produce work using a single unified language because I think it’s important to see everything as a whole”.

The exhibition also features select works he produced prior to his travels, demonstrating a range of techniques. Some of the works have a painterly approach, such as Blooms no. 2, which includes expansive swaths of monochromatic color.

In Deconstructions no. 1, Nguyen plays with negative space by peeling back a flap of canvas from the center of the composition to reveal an entirely different color palette underneath. The work can be hung to expose the painted underside—or not.

Nguyen also experiments with format, such as in The departure, where gradients of color pulsate across a canvas that has been sectioned into three irregular silhouettes, which, depending on how they are hung, can evoke a remote destination on a map or a bird in flight.

Kenny Nguyen has participated in exhibitions across the globe, including at the Sejong Museum of Art, Seoul; CICA Museum (Czong Institute for Contemporary Art), Gimpo, Gyeonggi Province, Korea; Kunstwerk Carlshütte, Büdelsdorf, Germany; LaGrange Art Museum, Georgia; Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville, Florida; Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, Santa Ana, California; and The Rayburn House Office Building, United States Capitol Complex, Washington, DC. In 2016, Nguyen received the Excellence Asia Contemporary Young Artist Award from Sejong Museum of Art and in 2023, a nomination for the Joan Mitchell Fellowship. He has been awarded numerous grants, fellowships and residencies.