AXTMANBRILLA
is brought by
BRILLA CONSULTING GMBH & CO.KG, GERMANY
in collaboration with
MARKETING & CONSULTING DI GIULIA KASCINA, ITALY
KV explores war, migration and the Asian diaspora through his Vietnamese family’s experiences of cultural assimilation in Canada as a minority immigrant family.
The Red Canoe symbolically looks back to the end of war with hope for the future. The brutalist building is the Reunification Palace, formerly the residence of the South Vietnamese President during the war. At 10:45 on 30 April 1975, a tank of the North Vietnamese army bulldozed through the main gate, effectively ending the Vietnam War.
The use of warm fiery foreground colours against the cold blue water indicates the contrasting range of emotions that we lived through.
Kv Duong
KV Duong (born 1980 in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam) is a London based multi-disciplinary artist. Duong explores themes of war migration and cultural assimilation through a re-examination of his parents’ experience of the Vietnam war and his own experience of growing up in Canada in a minority immigrant family.
In his paintings, Duong blends layers of acrylic paint with historic images of Vietnam. The original source images are alienated using paint and physical techniques – ripping, scratching, erasing – to disrupt the photograph’s original representation. The ruptured surface of the work responds to the conflict. The sense of movement in the painting responds to his migration journey. The final work functions like a palimpsest where a new narrative is created while the work’s history is revealed through its scars.
Duong is a self-taught artist with a background in structural engineering. He has been a part of several open competitions including Derwent Art Prize, Discerning Eye, Royal Cambrian Academy Open and BBC’s Royal Academy Summer Exhibition Program.
