Intermission

Exhibition: 12 Mar – 03 May 2026
Art tour with the artist: 03 PM – 05 PM, Sun 08 Mar 2026
Gate Gate Gallery
Floor 3, 230/18 Pasteur, Xuân Hoà ward, HCMC
Registration link for the art tour

From the organizer:

Gate Gate Gallery is pleased to present “Intermission”, Hai Hoang (Hoàng Long Hải)’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. “Intermission” features a new body of paintings, beginning with material experimentation: oil paint thinned with turpentine and oil-based medium to form translucent layers that bleed, pool, and settle in unpredictable manners across the canvas. Working with dilution and accumulation rather than density, Hai allows material behaviour to guide his imagery. Depth emerges through layering when each pass of paint leaves behind visual and emotional residue.

Hai Hoang (Hoàng Long Hải, b. 2003, Vietnam) is a painter based in London and Hanoi. Working primarily with oil on canvas, Hai makes quiet paintings that explore themes of nostalgia and memories. He depicts lonely men, children, or small birds in a deep melancholy or contemplation. Referencing archival materials of historical imagery to family photo albums to investigate memories, Hai creates spaces that feel both familiar and dreamlike–an idealized world where emotional vulnerability and stillness exist. They are memories that feel both real and uncertain.

Hai’s paintings blend worlds into one another to form an undisturbed realm. Hai constructs his own silence in a bustling world, depicting figures of objects immersed in thoughts, or in the feeling of thinking about what they are thinking. In “Homesick”, a raven and a small figurine share the same landscape facing one another across a quiet distance. The raven suggests a presence from the past–an observer, perhaps a former self–while the small figurine appears vulnerable within its own world. “Homesick” is calm yet charged, similar to homesickness is a form of love felt from afar–a condition of being between places, between versions of the self.

Inside the bird nest, “Soul” stands alone. Darker in colors and more compressed in composition, the painting carries a weight that contrasts the collection of works. That space feels enclosed, almost protective as if the work is held within it. Here, Hai returns to the solemn intensity that shaped his previous solo exhibition “Glassy Figures” (2021). Layers are dense, colors are deep, “Soul” draws us inward to a concentrated state. It reveals the emotional core from which Hai continues to grow.

Stepping out of the nest, the exhibition moves from compression to expansion: “Death and the Maiden” and “Lonely Child” are installed back-to-back along the same axis like two sides of a single sheet. Hai brings back the raven in “Lonely Child” to affirm a shift from an intense black toward one that rests under sunlight–the darkness stays omnipresent, but steadier and more composed. The symbols remain, yet the weight has changed. He revisits familiar imagery with greater clarity, most evident in “Peace” where children stand hand in hand in a circle around the lake. Positioned at the end of “Intermission”, “Peace” gathers this transition into a calm and grounded conclusion. Solemnity is with light and balance.

“Intermission” is a period of pause between acts in a play, a temporary silence before the story goes on. The title reflects a state of remaining rather than resolving, of staying with uncertainty, melancholy, and quiet attention without seeking immediate clarity. Hai’s figurines, landscapes, and observers coexist in “Intermission”. What emerges is a gentle insistence on presence: an invitation to pause, to attend, and to consider what we are willing to hold.

About Hai Hoang:
Hai Hoang (Hoàng Long Hải, b. 2003, Vietnam) is a painter based in London and Hanoi. Hai is a 2025 First Class graduate of Kingston School of Art (London), where he was nominated for the Freelands Painting Prize 2025. His work has been featured across the United Kingdom and Vietnam, at venues such as the Kingston School of Art (London), Gerald Moore Gallery (London), Studio 1.1 (London), Studio KT1 (London), Vincom Center for Contemporary Art (VCCA) (Hanoi), and 16 Ngo Quyen Fine Arts Gallery (Hanoi), where he debuted his solo exhibition “Glassy Figures” in 2021.