Nixking's Blog

[Verse 1] Raindrops, Fall From, Everywhere. I Reach Out, For You, But Your Not There. So I Stood, Waiting, In The Dark. With Your Picture, In My Hands, Story Of a Broken Heart. [Chorus] Stay With Me. Don't Let Me Go. Cause I Can't Be Without You. Just Stay With Me. And Hold Me Close. Because I've Built My World Around You. And I Don't Wanna Know What's It Like Without You. So Stay with Me. Just Stay With Me. [Verse 2] I'm Trying And Hoping, For The Day. When my touch is enough, To Take The Pain Away. Cause I've Searched For So Long. The Answer Is Clear, We'll be OK if We Don't Let It Disappear. [Chorus] Stay With Me. Don't let Me go. Cause I Can't Be Without You. Just Stay With Me. And Hold Me Close. Because I've Built My World Around You. And I Don't Wanna Know What's it Like Without You. So Stay with Me. Just Stay With Me. [Verse 3] I've searched my heart over, So many many times. No you and I, is like no stars to light the sky at night. Our Picture Hangs Out Of Tune, Remind Me Of The Days, You Promised Me We'd Always, And Never Go Away. That's Why I Need You To Stay. [Chorus] Stay With Me. Don't let Me go. Cause I Can't Be Without You. Just Stay With Me. And Hold Me Close. Because I've Built My World Around You. And I Don't Wanna Know What's It Like Without You. So Stay with Me. Just Stay With Me. [Fades] oooo.. oh oh don't leave. so I stay waiting in the dark... Mưa, rơi xuống từ khắp nơi khi anh cố gắng thoát ra... vì em...Nhưng em không có ở đó. Vì vậy anh vẫn đợi....trong bóng tối - lặng thinh và đơn độc... Hình ảnh của em trong tay anh là câu chuyện của 1 trái tim đã tan vỡ. Hãy ở lại với anh, đừng để anh ra đi. Vì anh không thể sống thiếu em. Hãy ở lại với anh, và hãy ôm anh thật chặt. Bởi vì anh đã xây dựng 1 thế giới có em ở trong đó. Và anh không muốn biết nó sẽ như thế nào nếu không có em. Vì vậy hãy ở lại với anh. Hãy ở lại với anh... Anh đang cố gắng và hi vọng. Đến ngày anh có thể đẩy được nổi đau đi xa. Vì anh đã tìm kiếm rất lâu, 1 câu trả lời rõ ràng, Chúng ta sẽ ổn nếu chúng ta không để câu trả lời đó mất đi. Hãy ở lại với anh, đừng để anh ra đi. Vì anh không thể sống thiếu em. Hãy ở lại với anh, và giữ anh thật gần. Bởi vì anh đã xây dựng 1 thế giới có em ở trong đó. Và anh không muốn biết nó sẽ như thế nào nếu không có em. Vì vậy hãy ở lại với anh. Hãy ở lại với anh... Anh đã tìm kiếm trái tim của anh rất nhiều lần. Không có em... với anh, như là bầu trời đêm không có những ngôi sao để thắp sáng . Hình ảnh của chúng ta, nhắc anh nhớ những ngày em hứa với anh chúng ta sẽ luôn luôn và không bao giờ xa nhau. Đó là lí do vì sao anh cần em ở lại. Hãy ở lại với anh, đừng để anh ra đi. Vì anh không thể sống thiếu em. Hãy ở lại với anh, và giữ anh thật gần. Bởi vì anh đã xây dựng 1 thế giới có em ở trong đó. Và anh không muốn biết nó sẽ như thế nào nếu không có em. Vì vậy hãy ở lại với anh. Hãy ở lại với anh... Đừng rời anh.. Anh đang đợi trong bóng tối - lặng thinh và đơn độc. (Translated by Nicholas Kingism)

The rain falls on my windows
And a coldness runs through my soul
And the rain falls, oh the rain falls
I don't want to be alone

I wish that I could photoshop all our bad memories
Because the flashbacks, oh the flashbacks
Won't leave me alone

If you come back to me
I'll be all that you need
Baby, come back to me
Let me make up for what happened in the past

Baby come back to me (come back)
I'll be everything you need (come back)
Baby come back to me (come back)
Boy, you're one in a million (come back)
Baby come back to me (come back)
I'll be everything you need (come back)
Baby come back to me (come back)
You're one in a million (one in a million)

Lower east side of Manhattan
She goes shopping for new clothes
And she buys this
And she buys that
Just leave her alone

I wish that he would listen to her side of the story
It isn't that bad
It isn't that bad
And she's wiser for it now

I admit I cheated
Don't know why I did it
But I do regret it
Nothing I can do or say can change the past

Baby come back to me (come back)
I'll be everything you need (come back)
Baby come back to me (come back)
Boy, you're one in a million (come back)
Baby come back to me (come back)
I'll be everything you need (come back)
Baby come back to me (come back)
You're one in a million (one in a million)

Everything I ever did
Heaven knows I'm sorry babe
I was too dumb to see
You were always there for me
And my curiosity got the better of me
Baby take it easy on me

Anything from A to Z
Call me what you wanna but
I open my heart to be
You are my priority
Can't you see you punished me
More than enough already
Baby take it easy on me

Baby, take it easy on me

Baby come back to me
Baby come back to me

Baby come back to me (come back)
I'll be everything you need (come back)
Baby come back to me (come back)
Boy, you're one in a million (come back)
Baby come back to me (come back)
I'll be everything you need (come back)
Baby come back to me (come back)
You're one in a million (one in a million)

Baby come back to me (come back)
I'll be everything you need (come back)
Baby come back to me (come back)
Boy, you're one in a million (come back)
Baby come back to me (come back)
I'll be everything you need (come back)
Baby come back to me (come back)
You're one in a million (one in a million)

Full name : Nguyen Hung Trinh
Date of birth : 1954
Place of birth : Quang Nam - Vietnam
Place of residence : Ho Chi Minh City and Nha Trang city - Vietnam

Website: www.nguyenhungtrinhart.com


Nguyen Hung Trinh has loved painting since he was young. He has spent a long time trying to create something specific, a new way to paint and has finally achieved it by painting using one finger and a palette knife . His style is combination of three techniques: abstract, surrealist and expressionist.

"My work, first of all, is about a journey inward.
I don’t like to portray reality. What I prefer to do, by my own artworks, is to look for something I met in a dream, something I found accidentally at the corner of my heart. I try to paint, intuitively, a lyrical feeling or a metaphysical thought.
For me, to paint is an attempt to catch up with something that is not only fragile but also unknown. I discover and create my own soul at the same time. I recognize my innermost being through the colors and the figures on the canvas. Imitating the best known phrase by Descartes, I would like to say: I paint, therefore, I am.
The journey inward, therefore, is also a journey outward."






INDIVIDUAL EXHIBITIONS

2007, January: “Myth Day”, Saigon-USA , California , USA

2006, July: “Recent Works”, Tu Do Gallery, HCM city, Vietnam

2004, November: “Modern Art Talks Vietnamese”, Stuttgart, Germany

2002, June: “Time of Human Being 3”, Tu Do Gallery, HCM city, Vietnam

2002, May: "Liverpool City Art Festival 2002", Sydney, Australia

2002, February – March: “At the corner”, Gabriel Gallery, Melbourne, Australia

2002, January: “Timeless Refrain”, Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, Sydney, Australia

2001, June: "Time of Human Being 2", Bich Cau Gallery, HCM city, Vietnam

2000, January: "Time of Human Being 1", Hoang Hau Hotel, DaLat, Vietnam



SOME TYPICAL PAINTINGS WERE COLLECTED IN OVERSEAS

“Pain of Human” – Oil on canvas – Size: 1.55x1.55m – At Liverpool City Council, NSW, Australia.

“Eclipse of the sun” – Oil on canvas – Size: 1.55x1.55m – At Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia.

His paintings can be found among many individual and institutional collections around the world.






(opening speech for the exhibition "Timeless Refrain"
at the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre

by Bruce Keller, 12.1.02)


Ladies and Gentlemen,

It has been a privilege to be asked to speak here today, and clearly as we experience the exhibition that surrounds us, it is a privilege for us all to experience the genius of Mr Nguyen Hung Trinh. He is a significant Vietnamese artist – and from today we see that he is also a significant international artist.

Mr Trinh is seen as a radical reformer of Vietnamese visual arts – turning his back on the dominant Socialist Realism style and embracing the emotion and complexity of Abstraction. Mr Trinh has said “My work is a journey inwards. I don’t like to portray Reality, whatever Reality is. I prefer to look for something I met in a dream, something found accidentally at the corner of my heart. I try to paint intuitively, a lyrical feeling or a metaphysical thought. I am only aware of what I do when I have finished doing it. Paraphrasing Descartes, I want to say ‘I paint, therefore I am."

In conversation with Mr Trinh, I heard him speaking of his way of working. Of how he begins with an idea, then connects with paint and canvas using only his finger and a knife. Only when he has finished does he assess what he has created.

This revelation prompted in me parallel concepts of creativity expressed by the Western philosopher Fredric Nietzsche in his 1872 work The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music. Here he claimed that, to a lesser or greater degree, all creative work is a combination of Apollonian and Dionysian impulses.

Apollonian – from the god Apollo, representing the Sun, Order and Structure.

Dionysian – from the god Dionysis, representing Wine, Emotion, the Illogical, the Irrational, Chaos.

All creative activity, Nietschze claimed, is inevitably a combination of both – to a lesser or greater extent. With no Apollonian – there can be no structure (indeed, the very awareness that there is creative activity is itself Apollonian). With no Dionysian – all is arid, barren, cold.

Trinh’s work displays strong evidence of the Apollonian, yet it is also very much in touch with the Dionysian. But while these opposites in his work provoke a Western philosophical model in their interpretation, they of course also provoke an even greater Eastern philosophical Model – that of Yin Yang.

And, indeed, when we survey Trinh’s work, we see many of the binaries and dualities of Yin Yang:

Flesh/Spirit

Religion/Sexuality

Male/Female

Dark/Light

Order/Chaos

Ecstasy/Suffering

Soft/Hard

The Curved/The Angular

The Finger and the Knife

…. And many others which you will find for yourself.

Each of these concepts is encased in their other, each opposite embraces and becomes its opposite… and these present artworks speak to us across nationality, race and belief. Yet, at the same time, they are extremely Vietnamese. In their abstraction can be glimpsed a myriad culturally loaded images:

Rice fields and conical hats

The boy and the buffalo

The eternal presence of the Moon

Images of past war and suffering.

And yet, at the same time, these artworks are universal. For non-Vietnamese, their effect is also very powerful. Thus, their themes are universal, but our response to them is personal. Each of these artworks prompts our own cultural responses.

For example, in the present collection, there is the continual presence of elongated, dark, twisted human figures. I know that they are human; but as a Sydney-sider, I also see, in memory of the recent bushfires, blackened trees on a smoky landscape.

As you absorb Trinh’s paintings, note his human figures – contorted, reptilian, stretched, elongated, the metallic complexity within the bodies (“… the working of the knife…”) In particular, note Trinh’s artwork Human Shadows , where there are clearly several bodies on the canvas, but it could also be a single body torn apart. This canvas conjures forth a battlefield.

Trinh’s work is remarkable for the diversity of its theme and expression, but when it is surveyed as a collection, clear and distinctive motifs appear. For example, examine three works displayed in the present collection:

Timeless Refrain:

In the background, we see smoke and flame – chaos … the domain of the Dionysian.

But the structure of the work has a sense of layers, of the 3-dimensional … and floating above this chaos is a square (a square within a square), representing Trinh’s place of calm. This sanctuary is Apollonian and constructed. The chaos is that of nature and animal emotion. The square is the intellect, the cultivated – because no straight lines appear in nature.

But above this layer is another – figures/muses dancing in celebration. Dancing the dance of life – and co-incidentally provoking thoughts of Matisse’s 1909 work

The Dance. But in this case – observe the colour and the shading. With Trinh, even his ecstasy is sombre.

And observe again the 3-dimensional quality of the work – above, the muses dancing their sombre dance; below, the chaos of nature, emotion and the sub-conscious; and suspended in-between the individual, encased in a constructed, balanced calm.

Eclipse:

Again, we confront the square of constructed calm – but this time it is red and russet, and the proportions are very different. We are clearly in an urban landscape – and there are many windows. Again, as with Timeless Refrain, we see the presence of dancers with outstretched hands. But this time, they are more formal. They could be buffalo skulls. And if we take a step back and survey the landscape from a farther perspective, we find that faces are staring back at us. And above all this, the Moon is a hurtling meteor. And below, a thin crescent of yellow Sun is eclipsed by the Moon.

Yin Yang, Square and Crescent – these are my responses to the artwork. You will find your own. And finally, we come to the third example:

I and I:

This artwork is more representational, more practical, than many of the other works presently displayed. In this piece, we see the artist surrounded by his tools of trade, reclining and gazing at the mirror that is the canvas.

The constructed square of previous work has become the canvas. The figure represented upon it has become a female figure. But what is she doing? Kneeling in supplication? Or kneading some malleable substance?

Yin Yang… Male Female… Spirituality and Sexuality. All are opposites combined. All are created by finger and knife. And this conclusion reminds us of Trinh’s compatriot Nguyen Quang Thieu, who has written:

On my writing desk the paper knife
Is the teeth of a smiling stranger.
The cry of a cricket imprisoned
In the corner of the house opens a path
Through wild grass to suburban fields.
I am a clump of moss, old and new,
On the wall of the little ancient temple.
The pile of grapefruit leaves has not burned for ten years;
For ten years I’ve been pressed back to my childhood.
The lovely wounds have been asleep
But now the mouth of the wounds opens two pink petals.
Something stirs in the veins of the wall,
Something glides on the smile of the knife
Like a swan on a lake.
Pain is less than … less than ….
Pain stands up reluctantly
In the laughing light of the sharp knife
And in poems.

…. And also in paintings.

Trinh is like a lightning rod – a conductor of electricity. But this electricity is of a more primitive, more supernatural kind. It is indeed the contrary essence of the Human Experience.

It hovers invisible in the air … it passes through Trinh into the earth – our World.

It is unconscious, illogical – and it shocks and jolts our emotions, reminding our logical selves of the pain and joy of existence. Let us celebrate these canvasses.



Bruce Keller
Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre
12.1.02

(From Tienve.org)






SOME COMMENTS ON NGUYEN HUNG TRINH


“Trinh is a significant Vietnamese artist, and from today we see he is also a significant international artist.”
Bruce Keller (Lecturer, playwright and theatre director, Australia)







“Nguyen Hung Trinh seeks to express himself through distortion, primitivism and the jarring application of formal elements. Each of his works, being always well-structured and emotionally intense, depicts artically his idiosyncrasies and his view of time and reality, as well as human destiny.”
Nguyen Hung (Visual art critic, Vietnam)






“Nguyen Hung Trinh imagination is boundless, and his talent is not limited to just a means of expression. Actually, I think, he doesn’t express with his brush and fingers, but he IMAGINES with them. Or, I may say, his brush and fingers, as an extension of his mind, imagine right on the canvas, at the very moment of every stroke.”
Hoang Ngoc Tuan (Composer and critic, Australia)








“Trinh’s paintings are both inspiring and disturbing. The imperfect world is being dissolved into an eternal beauty.”
Petre Santry (Lecturer and art critic, Australia)







“Trinh’s style is pretty overpowering. To truly see into his paintings I have to struggle through the tight surface and readjust my eyes to another way of seeing space. What was at first flat began to open up.[…]. I am fascinated by the texture of the bodies in Trinh’s paintings. Initially they look barren and concrete. Or they even look like concrete. But again, on closer inspection, they represent both external surface, or internal feeling.”
Dr. Mark Stevenson (Lecturer in Asia Studies, Australia)






“Nguyen Hung Trinh’s first solo exhibition in Australia – Timeless Refrain – illustrates his inward journey, a collection of artworks which are distorted form instead of realism”
Kate Sikora (Journalist, Australia)






“In his paintings, Nguyen Hung Trinh tries to show people what’s beneath the surface of things.[…]. It’s not until you look at the use of darkness and the placement of smeared color in his paintings that you can begin to see the way he has represented the postmodern condition of our time.”
Eva Kowalski (Journalist, Australia)





Trinh is credited with being one of a handful of nonconformist artists who radically reformed Vietnamese visual arts, using abstraction in place of realism.
(neXus Magazine) – Victoria university – April 2002