Nguyễn Duy-Mạnh

Biography

Nguyễn Duy Mạnh (b. 1984, Vinh Phuc, Vietnam) graduated from the College of Education in 2007 with a major in Fine Arts Education. He is a member of the Vietnam Fine Arts Association and currently lives and works in Hanoi.

His artistic practice is a process of self-study and experimental exploration in the field of visual arts. Since 2006, Duy Mạnh has successively worked with media and materials such as painting, fiber, objects, and ceramics. He strives to reveal the spiritual life within the objects and matter incorporated into his work through manipulation, action, and the arrangement of the exhibition space.

Throughout his practice, Duy Mạnh is concerned with highlighting the vulnerability and disintegration of values and culture. He represents the trauma that disrupts an individual's spiritual life in the face of ongoing reality. He explains, "The work is a piece of me; it's not a medium, it's a spiritual life." For the past seven years he has concentrated on pottery, and during this time his ceramic work has become deeply infused with the expressive forms he sought in earlier periods.

His selective exhibitions include: Không gian bên trong, Vietnam Fine Arts Museum, Hanoi, 2016; Yin & Yang in contemporary sculpture, The Muse Art Space, Hanoi, 2023; The National Vietnam Fine Arts exhibition, 2 Hoa Lư, Hanoi, Vietnam, 2020; Bịt mắt bắt dê, Ngo Quyen Art Exhibition Center, Hanoi, Vietnam, 2019; Emerging Fine Artists Festival, Vincom Megamall Royal City, Hanoi, Vietnam, 2017.

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Practice

“For me, pottery, like people, has cultural value and contains spiritual life. I cannot tell if I speak the language of pottery or if pottery speaks my language".

Nguyễn Duy Mạnh creates pottery using forms and patterns inspired by the historical periods of the cultural region in which he lives. He deconstructs them by cutting, sawing and fragmenting. "The process of practising artistic ideas goes hand in hand with my reawakening to the reality of cultural and spiritual life. In it, the collapse of the value system and the transition to material life occur as an evolution that includes human tragedies."

The thoughts, ideas, and culture of every age and civilization leave their imprints on the materials and utensils of the time. For Duy Mạnh, it is a trace of the reality of life as he experiences it. For him, imperfections, fractures and brokenness carry the beauty of consciousness.

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Works