Hom Nguyen

Hom Nguyen, born in Paris in 1972, is a self-taught artist with instinctive style.

As an unconventional personality, his works are just as much. Working with charcoal, gouache felt, oil or even pen, each of his paintings appears as a combat, a hand to hand confrontation with matter from which arises a will: to reveal the deepest of the human being through the lines and color.

Most of Hom’s work revolves around the creation of monumental portraits. The choice of colors, the application of the material or the vivacity of the gesture are always done in order to show to the world his vision of the human being beyond appearances. His works capture and transcend the depth of feelings and the complexity of the emotions that overwhelm the human soul.

His work are increasingly exposed to the world through international contemporary art exhibitions. The Bangkok post highlights that the artist never stop himself from making a foray into other lands, such as his perspective on Asian artistic and philosophical tradition. As the representative of occidental and oriental culture, Hom Nguyen works toward widening the cultural set, creating a bridge between France and Asia.

The first series hidden, “sans Reperes” and “inner Cry” continue to pay tribute to the artist’s mother and the history of the immigration. Each one leads the audience to feel the pains and nightmares experienced by these children and illustrate the interpretation of subconscious dreams: on one hand, the desire to establish a first human interaction necessarily require eye contact; on the other hand shouting for help is no necessarily heard. No sound come out, only the inner cry remains.

Hom’s work on a series of pencilled masks particularly focused on the expression of Asian children without mouth, is the result of a purely mental projection. Working without a human model, Hom Nguyen solely relies on his memory and emotion of the moment to draw the face of the child he used to be: a child born to an immigrant mother, one of the “Boat People”.

With the following series “Lifeline”, “Trajectory”, “Darkside” and “Roots”, the artist continues with the introspective process, his works echo a resilient memory, passing down a history gone by in a quest for identity.

The fleetingness of the artist’s life lines facilitate the emergence of an emotional experience where barriers fade. His works fit in the transition between figurative and abstract art, serving to question the lines between material and intellect, emotion and questioning. The artist’s intent is to open the individual to the possibility of changeability, of and openness towards others.

His stroke does not completely outline the model, he does not define it. Hom suggests perspectives, offers temporary limits, draws new trajectories and tends to break the boundaries between the human and the world, between the subject and the object, between senses and sensibility.