artLIVE – Have you ever unexpectedly glimpsed yourself within memories thought long forgotten? If not, step into ‘Mien Thieng Xanh’, where Huynh Le Nhat Tan reaches the deepest layers of your emotions.
Huynh Le Nhat Tan – The brushstrokes that create imagined art
Born in 1973, Huynh Le Nhat Tan lives and works in Da Nang. He is the author of ‘Men Da’ (2009) and ‘Que Than’ (2017), and has left a strong impression on audiences with ‘Vet Can Nguyen’ and ‘Dau Noi Sinh Ton’ (Art Graphic Poetry, 2022). His poetic intuition gives his paintings a ‘dual language’: image and rhythm, color and metaphor.
His works go beyond pleasing the eye; they aim to open the viewer’s inner world, inviting a silent dialogue between memory and reality, light and shadow, amidst the vibrant life of the city.
If ‘Vet Can Nguyen’ was an excavation of memory, confronting ruins, traces of time, and a longing for original essence, then ‘Mien Thieng Xanh’ continues this journey with greater confidence, clarity, and imaginative richness.
In ‘Vet Can Nguyen’, echoes of the past call for return, but in ‘Mien Thieng Xanh’, the journey becomes a spiritual sanctuary. Here, Cham towers in ruins, dust-covered bas-reliefs, statues of Shiva and Vishnu, and traces of Buddhist and Hindu culture are brought to life through the fusion of poetry, painting, and sculpture. It is a space between decay and renewal, recalling the past while resonating in the present.
In ‘Mien Thieng Xanh’ – Yearning or being held
The artist presents more than 40 acrylic-on-canvas works. These paintings go beyond technical display to become a journey of searching for fragments within the soul, between the music of the forest and the city, between memory and remembrance, pain and the fragile beauty of human existence.
Sometimes all we need is a small ‘nest’ to hold ourselves amidst the vast wandering world. For Huynh Le Nhat Tan, ‘Mien Thieng Xanh’ is a metaphor for such a refuge – no longer a search, because he has already found it.
Curator Ly Doi once said, “At times trapped, at times free, sometimes drifting, sometimes longing to escape… a bizarre existential state”, describing the artist’s mindset during the creation of ‘Mien Thieng Xanh’.
Tan’s brushwork emphasizes lightness and transparency. He lets the canvas breathe, allowing light to find its own resting place. Gentle strokes create natural washes, often resembling monotype textures.
This creates a visual stratigraphy: thin, watercolor-like acrylic layers, sometimes shimmering with metallic hues, producing effects both ethereal and fragile, yet fractured, like traces of time. The structure evokes sandstone sediments and eroded temple walls, where history and spirituality coexist, and ruins bear witness to the flow of memory.
From afar, his paintings appear purely abstract; up close, traces of deities, Buddha’s hands, temple shapes, or Champa motifs subtly emerge. This ambiguity forms an aesthetic border between seeing and remembering, history and spirituality, matter and spirit.
“Life holds thousands of wounds that need no healing, only to be placed under light. Or an abstract land not on any map, but in our hearts. I call it Mien Thieng Xanh.” – Huynh Le Nhat Tan
From ‘Vet Can Nguyen’ to ‘Mien Thieng Xanh’, he asserts a personal vision: painting as a realm of memory and spirituality, where cultural traces intertwine with personal emotion, transforming art into a spiritual experience.
Even the titles – ‘Humans and the Characters of Birds’, ‘Blue Dream’, ‘Silent Song’, ‘Wings of the Brown Earth’, ‘Celestial Dance’ – resonate like poetry, as light and whispering as a primordial and distant breath.
His paintings evoke a sensuous atmosphere where light may lose its way, and everyday fragments, even discarded remnants, carry soul and poetic essence.
‘Mien Thieng Xanh’ is open from September 25 to October 5, 2025, at 22 Gallery, 22 Pham Cu Luong, Tan Son Hoa Ward, Ho Chi Minh City.
Photo: 22 Gallery
