“Some people drink, or start a fight when they feel angry or depressed. I paint. I paint until I am completely empty.”
It is no surprise that Lan has become an artist: his father is well known artist La Hon, a very accomplished painter whose style is very much influenced by the French tradition. Lan however, has broken away from a traditional style and has very much developed an individual voice that resonates with the international contemporary art scene.
His paintings possess an amazing energy, reminiscent of Jackson Pollock’s energetic ‘action paintings’. In his works there is an emphasis on spontaneous, automatic and subconscious creation. The many layers of scribbles and lines are his ‘made-up’ language. Although we cannot read his words, we can feel them. We can feel the emotions Lan felt while painting; there is an abundance of joy in one work, while anger or fear in another. It is this pure energy which makes his works so powerful and moving at the same time.
La Nhu Lan has spend most of his life in Ho Chi Minh City where he was born in 1975 and where he still lives and works today. He graduated from the Ho Chi Minh Fine Art University in 2001.
Although Lan only finished University in 2001, he has painted a lot longer. He started exhibiting seriously in 1999, when he was a finalist of the prestigious Nokia Asia Pacific Awards, held in Ho Chi Minh City and the Vietnam Asean Phillip Morris Awards which is held in Ho Chi Minh City and the National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Lan has been a finalist for both awards for three consecutive years.
In 2000 Lan was invited to participate at the Welcome to the Millennium exhibition, held in Ho Chi Minh City. He has exhibited at the Fine Arts Association in Ho Chi Minh City several times and had solo and group shows at several commercial galleries in Ho Chi Minh City. In 2005 a book called Open: Nguyen Son & La Nhu Lan was published to accompany the exhibition Open held in Ho Chi Minh City in 2005.
Although Lan receives plenty of recognition in his own country, he is recognised as one of the leading emerging artists of Vietnam, Voices of Vietnam is Lan’s first commercial show outside Vietnam. His work is represented in the Post Vi Dai Art Collection (Switzerland).
