Luu, Dat Nguyen

LUU DAT

PAINTING & ARTWORKS

L

uu Dat Painting is “abstract art”, created at the opposite of the concrete, or “realism.” Luu Dat does not try to imitate nature, but to use nature as a starting off point. Color, line, and form are more important to him than the details of the actual subject matter. He wants to give a sense or feel for the subject rather than an exact replication.

Luu Dat Painting is thus the visualization of emotional structures and processes. It reduces specific objects and events to their universal elements: rhythm, movement, texture, color, eliciting an emotional engagement through the strength of its composition and conveying the shifting of psychological states.

In his abstractions, Luu Dat has been particularly interested in the relationship between line and form, a relationship that parallels those of the perceived world: movement and stillness, action and thought, dynamism and placidity. Integrated colors have been chosen for their particular emotional content to reflect the shifting strengths of these elements within the world of the composition, where abstract spaces are combined with cosmic landscapes and creative myths of ancient civilizations: Celestial Ocean, Angel Fire, Mekong Green, Black Sun, Aeolus, Metamorphosis, and other evocative titles are situated within this significant plastic emergence. Au-Co is the myth of dichotomy, the original division of the Ancient Viets, the schism between reality and ideal, harmony and errancy, figures and abstractions. Thus, The Quest for love and peace is drawn on transparent earth tones coupled with frost white and tender blue, cross-fusing in diagonal structures. If Mekong Green is a serene, Zen-like piece to anchor meditation and nostalgia, Shiva is indeed the shape of destruction and the colors of rebirth. And the Myth of Fire, as a romantic inspiration of the home genies, is the expression of Love & Purification in the Vietnamese tradition.

Layers of enamel fluidic colors cover luan wood panels to become on the surface revelation of underground rivers, sky oceans, eclipse of black sun, fire on granite, aquatic and ethereal dimensions in transient osmosis. The obsessional presence of the universe in Luu Dat Painting is condensed in a maze of moving cells on prismatic changes and fixations, by which the abstract integration of color and form becomes a creative vision with mythical undertones always in metamorphosis.

Luu Dat Painting is also communication, a shifting of emotional context to the viewers’ own interpretation of the plastic event. A new painting emerges from the discovery and imagination of the onlookers who become instantly co-authors of the art work in contemplation. The viewers are free to name differently the same art work, being co-creatively responsible for the painting, in new and different ways of appreciation and integration.

LUU DAT

– Former General Secretary, Young Artist Association, Vietnam (1970-72)

– PhD French Literature, History of Arts, Michigan State University (1982)

– Exhibition of Paintings & Sculptures, French Lycée Yersin, Dalat (1967)

– Exhibition of Paintings, Vietnamese American Association, Dalat (1968)

– Exhibition of Paintings, Vietnamese American Association, Saigon (1970)

– Sculpture Monument Hand of Hope, Camp Pendleton, CA (1975)

– Exhibition of Paintings Sculptures, Michigan State University (1976)

– Exhibition of Paintings, Kredge Art Center, MSU (1978)

– Exhibition of Paintings & Sculptures, Lansing Arts Center, Michigan (1980)

– Exhibition of Paintings, Aux Délices, Lansing, Michigan (1982)

– Exhibition of Paintings, Southfields Arts Center, Detroit, Michigan (1984)

– Group Exhibition of Paintings & Sculptures, Lansing, Michigan (1986)

– Exhibition of Paintings & Sculptures, Lansing Arts Center, Michigan (1988)

– Group Exhibition of Paintings, Ann Arbor, Michigan (1989)

– Exhibition of Paintings, Alexandria, Virginia (1990)

– Exhibition of Paintings, Barn & Noble Hall, Falls Church, Virginia (2000)

– Exhibition of Paintings, Café Montmartre, Reston, Virginia (2007)

– Exhibition of Paintings & Sculpture, The Institute for Project Leadership, Fairfax, VA (2007)

– Exhibition of Paintings, Pastry XPO, Falls Church, VA (2008)

– Open Kitchen, Mosaic Bas-Relief, Falls Church, VA (2009)

STUDIO

3111 CRANLEIGH CT, FAIRFAX, VA 22031

TEL. (703) 876-2620