Sparkle in the Vastness
2024
Tia-Thuy Nguyen’s debut exhibition at Almine Rech, presents over twenty mixed-media paintings from her ongoing series
‘I, My, Me, Cloud’
For Tia-Thuy Nguyen, clouds are like a blank canvas onto which elements like color, form and materiality are not intrinsic, but imposed. What we see as clouds are really the results of multiple external factors such as light, wind and moisture levels, all of which are constantly in flux.
Inspired by memories of her father — a wartime pilot — the image of the cloud in Tia’s work carries both wonder and uncertainty. Clouds can reveal, conceal, or quietly shift with emotion. These layered memories translate into luminous surfaces, where light, material, and space move together in quiet dialogue.
Each work brings together hand-embellished recycled glass, quartz, yarn, jute, bamboo fiber, and embroidery — set within a layered spatial environment of reflective textures and carpeted surfaces. Light does not simply fall here; it refracts, dissolves, and glides across each piece, as if cloud, stone, and air were speaking in silence.
In Tia-Thuy Nguyen’s hands, material becomes more than form — it becomes a state. A soft tension emerges between clarity and opacity, lightness and weight, between feeling and the space that holds it. Each cloud is unique; each painting is an atmosphere in motion.
At its heart, this body of work is a meditation on perception itself — where nothing is fixed, and meaning shimmers between light, memory, and the eye of the beholder.
Somewhere that's sweeter (Nơi ấy ngọt ngào), 2023, embellishment on canvas, 120 x 170 cm
Light plays a central role in Tia-Thuy Nguyen’s artistic practice — not only as a visual phenomenon, but as a conceptual foundation. Rooted in the quantum theory of light, her works evoke photons (the elementary particles that constitute light) through the use of tiny glass beads, each reflecting light at a slightly different angle. The result is a surface that shimmers, vibrates, and seems to shift with the viewer’s gaze.
Echoing the spirit of the French Impressionists — who sought to capture fleeting moments of light in landscape — Tia has developed a mixed-media technique that moves painting beyond mimesis or emotional expression, toward pure experience: light not only seen, but felt.
“More than clouds themselves, the true subject of my work is subjectivity — how we see, feel, and carry the sky inside us.”
Wandering the wonder sky (Rong chơi thế gian), 2023, oil on canvas, 160 x 160 cm
Sunlight is whispering (Giọt nắng thì thầm), 2023, oil on canvas, 160 x 160 cm
Were born to fly (Sinh ra là để bay), 2023, embellishment on canvas, 30 x 30 cm
The sunlight goes away (Mặt trời đi vắng), 2023, oil and embellishment on canvas, 90 x 60 cm
The edgier airspace (Tầng không góc cạnh), 2023, bamboo yarn, beads, jute and wool, 35 x 35 cm
Crouching cloud, hidden light (Mây cuộn giấu nắng), 2023, bamboo yarn, beads, jute and wool, 160 x 200 cm
