Clay Sculpture

Clay sculpture of a human figure by Nguyen Nhu Y, featured in the exhibition 'Nothing in Common', 18-27 January 1997.
Most of the artist's sculptures attempted to render an abstract representation of the human body. Since he lacked the knowledge of hardening the material in a kiln, the works were often fragile and easily demolished. Salon Natasha owns part of Nguyen's works in its collection.

Nguyen Nhu Y is a trained sculptor who graduated from the Fine Arts University in 1995. According to Natalia (Natasha) Kraevskaia in the article 'Naïve and Outsider Art in Vietnam', Nguyen would carve directly on stone or wood without making sketches beforehand. His practice concerned more about the process of making than the materials he worked with. She also suggested that a 'great numbers of his wooden sculptures appear to be inspired by the tomb figures of the ethnic tribes from the Tay Nguyen Plato in central Vietnam, but at the same time they reflect his own spontaneous expression and individual sensitivity'. Such combination of figural representations with imagined monstrous features was common in outsider art.

‘Nothing in Common’ differed from the previous exhibitions Salon Natasha organised, in the sense that it was neither thematic nor conceptually-driven; instead it put together three artists which was considered having ‘nothing in common’. Tran's paintings were characterised by the figural representations of male and female, attempting to reflect personal histories and sentiments and to embrace the concepts of unity and solitude; Mai's works addressed and experimented with Buddhist concepts; often rendered in a spontaneous manner, Nguyen's sculptures expressed a sense of primitivism.

Access level

Online

author
Publication/Creation date

Circa 1995

Creation place

Vietnam

Medium

Clay

Content type

artwork documentation

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Clay Sculpture