[Profile] Phan Trọng Văn

Artist’s Statement – Phan Trọng Văn

“I do not paint the wind, I only paint what it leaves behind.”

“Winds Through Memory” is a journey of revisiting what remains after emotions, memories, time, and the winds of life have passed through. My pictorial space this time does not describe or recreate, but rather opens up a sensory field, where the wind is no longer a visible form, but the residue of experience: a tremor, a void, a nameless loss.

With more than 27 works, medium size 1m x 1m, acrylic on canvas, I let color and form move freely like wind sweeping across memory. Overlapping layers, scratches, stains, fractured or asymmetrical structures… are not merely painterly gestures, but the inner traces of someone who grew up in Phan Rang – a land of relentless sun and wind.

Here, the wind is not just weather. The wind is a companion. The wind is a witness to a restless childhood across cracked fields, a sigh seeping through rusted rooftops, a force that carries away and leaves behind – quiet, yet hauntingly persistent in memory.

“Winds Through Memory” does not narrate, does not illustrate. The ambiguous forms, indeterminate palettes, and suspended rhythms serve as a mirror for viewers to reflect on themselves. Everyone carries unseen marks: a parting, an unfinished embrace, a dream left incomplete. My paintings stand as blurred mirrors, vague enough to reflect those hidden depths.

Amid the turbulence of brushstrokes, forceful and unrelenting, this second series unfolds an abstract world charged with energy and mystery. Submerged details, layered textures, spectral fragments of memory form enigmatic surfaces where the boundary between form and formlessness, between reality and sensation, grows fragile. In this ambiguity lies the pull—a vortex into a visual labyrinth—where beauty rests not in recognition, but in resonance.

No explanation, no illustration—only painting breathing on its own, crying out or whispering. And therein lies the allure of contemporary art: openness, freedom, and the power to stir the deepest layers of human emotion.