Thao Nguyen is a 20-year-old German-Vietnamese artist born and living in Berlin. She is currently a Fine art and English student while developing her artistic position through painting. Her portraits of young men moving somewhere between abstraction and realism are made primarily using acrylic and mixed media, including spray paint. Thao’s work is influenced by contemporary painters such as Gerhard Richter and Jenny Saville but also by film and music culture.

“The human face has always been my subject of interest; I try to express inner feelings and conditions of human nature by projecting them onto the male figure. For me, abstraction is a tool to convey a sense of distance and alienation – the loose and often aggressive brushwork is a result of the struggle with my cultural identity, frustration and is overall inspired by my personal situation and environment. My painting process often stretches over a long period of time where I destroy and eventually rebuild fragments bit by bit. I sometimes find myself physically exhausted by this process while the art-making functions as some sort of self-therapy at the same time.”