Vietnamese painter ...<\/p>\n
Mehru Jaffer
\nContributor
\nJakarta<\/p>\n
The art of Thi D. Nguyen follows in the spiritual footsteps
\nof Zen Buddhist monks. He makes the space on his canvases look
\nempty, even though they are full of detail. His strokes in Sumi,
\nor Chinese ink, may be simple but the tales they tell are
\ncomplex, making the extraordinary work of Nguyen often seem
\nordinary.<\/p>\n
Nguyen is an engineer by profession but in spirit he is a monk
\nwho practices a great deal of meditation. His aim is to transcend
\nordinary reality in the hope of finding the true nature of his
\nown being.<\/p>\n
He is apologetic for not being able to explain adequately in
\nwords all of this and much more, as his search concentrates only
\non non-conceptual awareness. His obsession is Nirvana and to
\nexperience the nature of Buddha, or the nothingness when the body
\nand mind are perfectly matched and past, present and future
\nconverge into one dazzling truth.<\/p>\n
Like all monks, Nguyen too believes that it is not possible to
\ngrasp the ultimate truth in words, so to communicate his inner
\nworld he has chosen to use the expressive art of abstract
\ndrawing, called Enzo in Zen Buddhism. \"En\" means circle, the
\nsymbol of truth and perfection, and \"zo\" is form. Enzo drawings
\nare mainly completed in one stroke.<\/p>\n
\"My art is spontaneous. In order to achieve this I go through
\nextensive periods of contemplation, as I comprehend the inner
\nnature of the aesthetic object. And the higher the degree of
\ncomprehension I am able to attain, the better the expression I
\ncan subsequently manifest in my work,\" Nguyen said as he prepared
\nfor his solo exhibition, Stone Conversations, which opened last
\nweek.<\/p>\n
The soft spoken Nguyen also revealed that at one stage in his
\nlife he gave up painting altogether.<\/p>\n
As a child in Vietnam painting came naturally to him, as he
\nwatched his elders practice calligraphy. But in 1975, during the
\nVietnam War, Nguyen, his brother, sister-in-law and their three
\nchildren crammed into a boat with hundreds of other refugees.<\/p>\n
The boat sailed to Canada and at the age of 27, Nguyen was
\nexpected to be practical and not to indulge in irrational and
\nnon-profitable activities like meditation and painting.<\/p>\n
Life was difficult so far from home and in an alien culture.
\nBut Nguyen soon found himself busy, learning English and studying
\nchemical engineering.<\/p>\n
It was only a decade later, when he found himself sitting
\nhelplessly at the bedside of a friend who was dying of a terminal
\ndisease, that he decided to communicate his feelings through
\ndrawings.<\/p>\n
His thoughts drifted back to his days as a child in his
\nvillage, and he remembered an endless carpet of lush, green rice
\nfields and animals everywhere. He also recalled how whenever
\nthere was a sickness in the family, it was traditional to cook a
\nchicken for the ailing person.<\/p>\n
The memory inspired Nguyen to draw countless chickens in
\nChinese ink for his friend lying in a Canadian hospital. That
\ngesture proved so cathartic, that he has not put down his
\npaintbrush since.<\/p>\n
Drawing has also helped him to come to terms with the war in
\nVietnam and his status as an eternal refugee, and also taught him
\nto bask in the wondrous feeling of not being emotionally attached
\nto any one nation. His wife is Austrian and together with their
\nteenaged son they enjoy living in a kampung in Purvakarta, West
\nJava, with its landscape similar to that in Vietnam.<\/p>\n
Nguyen is on a professional assignment in Java, but he paints
\nin his spare time, continuing to put down on paper his thoughts
\nas he continues to experience them, inside out.<\/p>\n
He is a versatile artist, drawing not just in Chinese ink but
\nalso painting on silk and dabbling in oil paint on canvas when
\nthe mood strikes him, and a few years ago his work caught the eye
\nof Evie Miranda, an art collector and the founder of Persada Guru
\nSukarno, a Central Jakarta boutique that deals in art objects.<\/p>\n
The work that drew her to Nguyen was Twelve Faces, with one
\nface drawn in Chinese ink every month of the year while in a
\ntrance of intense meditation.<\/p>\n
\"I fell in love with his artwork, which is able to evoke such
\na creative series of thought despite its simplicity,\" says Evie,
\nwho is the organizer of Nguyen's current exhibition.<\/p>\n
Having lived in Germany for 16 years and enjoyed the freshness
\nof contemporary art, Evie was a little tired of the same pictures
\nthat have been painted by Indonesian artists over the last
\nseveral decades. She finds Nguyen to be extremely original and
\nhis work a combination of the modern and the traditional.<\/p>\n
Thi Nguyen's works will be on exhibition in the lobby of the
\nRegent Hotel in Jakarta until Dec. 5.<\/p>",
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