Biography

Los Angeles-based artist Long Nguyen creates deeply personal paintings with humanistic content at a time when contemporary art is often defined by ironic detachment. Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of his work lies not in his expressive brushwork but rather in his use of veiled, dreamlike imagery. Nguyen summons the past on both a conscious and a subconscious level, incorporating themes of landscape, the human form, travel and transition, organs and fragments of the body, and aspects of nature, most significantly water, fire, and cyclones. Strangely beautiful, gritty, and tough, his paintings bathe in an aureate glow, like indelible reminders frozen in amber.

Born in 1958 in the seaside town of Nha Trang, South Vietnam, Nguyen came of age during the Vietnam War. He had planned to enroll in college to avoid being drafted into the army, however, he was forced to flee his country well before his 18th birthday. On April 29, 1975, when the city of Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese communists, Nguyen and several relatives embarked on a weeklong journey that transported him to a new life in the United States. He gained passage on a cargo boat that transported him and nearly four thousand other passengers along the Saigon River to the Pacific Ocean. After being rescued at sea, transferred to refugee camps, and waiting patiently for months, eventually Nguyen took up residence in Memphis, Tennessee, where he attended high school and college. Because his English was not strong, Nguyen initially struggled in school, but he managed to graduate with a B.S. in civil engineering from the Christian Brothers College. Working in engineering and taking art classes at night, he soon realized that his true path was that of an artist, and he eventually moved to San Jose to live with his brothers. He enrolled in the graduate fine arts program at San Jose State University, and began developing his trademark highly emotive style, gradating with his M.F.A. in 1985.

Homage to a Troubled Land (1989) encompasses the coupled senses of irrevocable loss and yearning that Nguyen felt for Vietnam despite the undeniable advantages of his new life. Displaying rudimentary landscape characteristics, the painting portrays a ground the color of blood, built with layers of varied crimson hues and seen in cross section. The top two-thirds of the canvas, painted in a teal blue-green that alludes to water, is strewn with examples of Nguyen’s symbology—cyclones, plants, flowers, and organlike shapes. Near the top of the composition, an uneven row of glowing red forms may represent either an offering of eternal devotion for his country, rife with problems, or a series of illuminated memorial candles.

Tales of Yellow Skin #32 is part of Nguyen’s series executed over the course of more than ten years and united by the use of the golden hue. In 1991, the artist recalled listening repeatedly to an antiwar song entitled Vietnamese Girl with Yellow Skin, and whether it was prompted by this musical input or the strains of his living situation at the time, he found himself embarking upon a new series. In 1996, Nguyen moved to Los Angeles with his partner, artist Vi Ly, to pursue teaching opportunities and to take advantage of the thriving art scene. The same year he painted Tales of Yellow Skin #32, and thereafter most of the paintings in the series were nonobjective. Surrounded by Southern California’s glowing light, Nguyen’s palette became cooler and less fiery, and he perfected his glazing techniques, applying the paint in numerous thin layers and allowing the canvas to occasionally peek through. Tales of Yellow Skin #32 shows the indirect influence of the artist’s return trip to Vietnam, taken a full seventeen years after his abrupt departure. His characteristic motifs are now buried amid nebulous forms that resemble coral reefs in semiabstract landscapes. Whereas his work was once read episodically, it now evokes a sense of flowing movement, reinforcing its underwater aspect. In 1992, Nguyen had traveled to Vietnam, visiting Halong Bay in the North, and viewing hundreds of craggy limestone outcroppings that legend says were carved by a dragon descending to earth. This landscape found its way into the painting, along with all the memories connected to Nguyen’s native land.

Having lived and worked in Los Angeles for the better part of a decade, Nguyen’s paintings now evoke a feeling of strength in reserve—tension beneath calm. Nguyen’s paintings communicate the trauma of a wartime refugee’s life in a graceful language of symbolic forms that ultimately transcend the limitations of their specific origins to become universal stories of human suffering and the potential for renewal. —J.N.

(SJMA Selections publication, 2004)

Born in Nha Trang, Vietnam.

Born in 1958 in Nha Trang, South Vietnam, Nguyen came of age during the Vietnam War. He had planned to enroll in college to avoid being drafted into the army; however, he was forced to flee his country on April 29, 1975, when the city of Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese. Nguyen and several relatives embarked on a weeklong journey by boat that transported him to a new life in the United States. After being rescued at sea, transferred to refugee camps, and waiting patiently for months, eventually Nguyen took up residence in Memphis, Tennessee, where he attended high school and college. Because his English was not strong, Nguyen initially struggled in school, but he managed to graduate with a B.S. in civil engineering from the Christian Brothers College. Working in engineering and taking art classes at night, he soon realized that his true path was that of an artist, and he eventually moved to San Jose to live with his brothers. Nguyen enrolled in the graduate fine arts program at San Jose State University, and began developing his trademark highly emotive style, gradating with his M.F.A. in 1985. Nguyen currently lives in Los Angeles, California. [Bio from Juicy Paint Exhibition, input by R. Faust, 8/11/2010]

Born in Vietnam on December 23, 1958, Long Nguyen grew up in Nha Trang, a seaside resort located in the Khánh Hoà province of South Vietnam, 450 kilometers north of Saigon. Nguyen was raised Catholic and was the second oldest child in a family with ten children-five brothers and four sisters. On April 30, 1975, as Saigon fell to the Communists, Nguyen, now 17, fled his native country in an oil tanker along with four family members. They were transferred to a large refugee camp at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, where they stayed for two weeks before moving to Memphis, Tennessee. Nguyen eventually earned a B.S. in civil engineering from the Christian Brothers College in Memphis.  By 1981 several of Nguyen’s brothers had also managed to leave Vietnam and settle in San Jose, so he decided to join them and enrolled in San Jose State University’s Master of Fine Arts program, graduating with an M.F.A. degree in 1985.  He was a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Grant in 1989, a Eureka Fellowship in 1993, and a California Art Council Grant in 1994, and his work is in the collections of the Oakland Museum of California and the Triton Museum of Art in Santa Clara, as well as private collections. In the 1990s Nguyen showed his work at the Frederick Spratt Gallery but is currently unaffiliated. This would be the second Long Nguyen painting to enter the SJMA permanent collection. (SJMA Collections Committee, 2003)

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