Hybrid drawings in thread and pastel
By Dương Mạnh Hùng

Installation view of Nghĩa’s most recent solo show at San Art, titled ‘Humming at the End of a Dream,’ 2024. Image courtesy of the artist and San Art.

Nghĩa Đặng is a Saigon-based artist whose mixed-media oeuvre dives into the subconscious of the primordial self. Nghĩa graduated from the School of Art Institute of Chicago with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Art. He is fascinated with the medium of drawing, deploying it as a tool to deconstruct and make sense of his experiences and relationships––the building blocks of human identity. On his experimental journey with drawing, the artist has amassed a repertoire of materials such as charcoal, graphite, and oil pastel, with each choice of material responding to specific emotions and needs.

Nghĩa Đặng, ‘Light My Fire,’ 2024, embroidery thread, oil pastel, linen on Aida fabric. Image courtesy of the artist and San Art.

A recent turning point in Nghĩa's art-making happened with the incorporation of textile threads into his drawing practice. Such a pivot can be encapsulated in the work ‘Light My Fire’ (2024), featuring a vibrant palette interspersed with surreal figures and embroidered appliqués. As a confessional artist whose conceptual thinking is heavily immersed in psychoanalytic theories, particularly those of Lacanian traditions, Nghĩa has imbued this work with deconstructed figures that he foraged from his vault of childhood dreams, saturated them in pastel hues, and juxtaposed them next to threaded curtains and patches. What appears to be somewhat familiar, such as a table, some fruits, a pair of shoes, becomes unsettling phantoms, perched at the edge of the fence between the artist’s oneiric garden and the primal forest on the other side.

Nghĩa Đặng, ‘Milk for Tonight,’ 2023, embroidery thread, oil pastel on Aida fabric. Image courtesy of the artist and San Art.

This visual contrast between pastel looseness and textile density results in a trancelike effect, luring the viewers into Nghĩa's mesmerising and chaotic psyche. His goal is not to lay bare his entire soul, but to tease out and situate a fragment of his subconscious within a larger nexus of human desires. His hybrid drawing becomes an invitation, beckoning the viewers to inch closer, to examine the same object or figure from multiple angles, to rejoice in the interweaving mélange of colours and forms, and to contemplate the emotions that such visual cues invoke within their heart.

Nghĩa’s latest solo exhibition ‘Humming at the End of A Dream’ (2024), curated by Mary Lou David at San Art, serves as an expansive and elaborative manifestation of his psyche as it traverses multiple terrains of memories, desires, and douleurs exquises. Posited as a series of subtle confessions, his hybrid series draws from past experimentation with textile in Chicago and newfound fascination with this material’s versatility. Nghĩa embarked on a series of durational drawing-making, where he marries both oil pastel and threads on fabric canvas. The pendulum swing between the repetitive, almost meditative, movements of the thread and the lavish strokes of pastel invokes a psychosomatic, trance-inducing rhythm not only for the artist himself, but also for the onlookers. Spiralling into the realm of the subconscious, Nghĩa examined and retrieved vestiges of memories. By unpacking them in sublime forms that are perched between material substance and poetic remembrance, he raises questions about humans’ interconnected subjectivities as seen from the vantage point of a dream.

Click here to read our dialogue with Nghĩa Đặng, where he speaks about Lacan and his psychoanalytical ideas, returning to Vietnam and his exploration of different mediums.