Exhibition “The Gaze that Remembers”
10 am – 06 pm, Wednesday – Sunday, 20 May – 15 June 2025
Gallery Medium
240B Pasteur, Ward Vo Thi Sau, District 3, HCMC
From the organizer:
Gallery Medium and Galerie BAO present Mắt Nhớ (The Gaze That Remembers), the first solo exhibition in Vietnam by Huỳnh Công Nhớ following acclaimed show in Paris.
This marks a special collaboration between Gallery Medium (HCMC) and Galerie BAO (Paris), united by a shared belief in the emotional power of art and storytelling. Together, they bring Nhớ’s intuitive, heartfelt practice home.
Born in Đà Nẵng in 1991, Huỳnh Công Nhớ stands out as an art brut (outsider art) artist with a natural talent and naïve approach that brings a raw, sincere, and instinctive expression. Entirely self-taught, he entered the art world through cinema, having been trained in Autumn Meeting program under the mentorship of director Trần Anh Hùng. With roots in filmmaking, he approaches painting like a director: each canvas tells a story through dancing brushstrokes, playful forms, and bold colors. His still-life works invite us to see everyday objects as characters—alive, magical, unforgettable.
As a self-taught artist who began with filmmaking, Huỳnh Công Nhớ brings a director’s lens to painting. His instinctive, dancing brushstrokes and bright, childlike colors create rhythmic, vibrant works that blur the lines between memory and imagination. Whether figures, animals, or still lifes, his subjects radiate energy and emotion.
Though not Catholic, Nhớ was raised by nuns and holds a deep belief in a transcendent force. His faceless human figures—always moving, always present—often wear halos, symbolizing faith, hope, and hidden potential. They’re both echoes of his childhood and reflections of a spiritual presence in the everyday.
His still life aren’t still at all. A coffee cup beside a sugar jar, toy animals mid-conversation—nothing is staged, nothing arranged. These objects live freely, as if beyond the artist’s control, inviting us into their quiet, unfiltered world.
