Galerie kajetan is delighted to present Silky Way, the first solo exhibition of Munich-based artist Minh Dung Vu (*1995). Alongside two smaller works on paper, the exhibition features new large-scale textile works in which Vu stitches shimmering silk, characterized by gentle color gradients, together with untreated matte linen, thus integrating it into the picture carrier. In doing so, the artist pushes the boundaries between painting, collage, and object, expanding the classical notion of the picture through a consistently material-based dimension. His works revolve around questions of cultural belonging, identity, and memory, and are distinguished by a subtle yet precisely controlled materiality as well as a strong spatial presence.
Vu’s artistic process begins with the selection and preparation of individual fabric panels, whose inherent behavior he deliberately incorporates into the process. The fabric responds to tension, seams, and folds, absorbing or resisting dye, altering its structure and transparency. Depending on weight and weave, the materials behave differently – qualities the artist employs with intent. Despite their two-dimensional setup, the interplay of density, translucency, and surface texture generates multilayered light and shadow effects that shift with the positioning in space.
Thus, space plays a central role in the still young oeuvre of the artist. Vu’s works are not conceived as isolated objects, but enter into a reciprocal relationship with their surroundings. Architecture, light, and the viewer’s movement transform their impact, while at the same time the works themselves open up new and surprising readings of space. Through his choice of material – silk, deeply rooted in Vietnamese culture and craft, and linen, firmly anchored in the history of Western painting – together with their treatment through stretching, folding, dyeing, draping, separating, and rejoining, as well as their final installation in space, Vu’s works reflect the flexibility of identity and the interweaving of two cultural reference systems.
Born in Vietnam, Vu incorporates biographical and cultural experience into his work without illustrating them explicitly. Traditional textile and color codes, visual echoes of musical forms such as chầu văn and ca trù, and fragments of personal memory converge in hybrid, abstract forms. Fabric, in its structurally articulated composition, becomes a carrier of history, rupture, and appropriation – a material language inscribed with both individual and collective narratives. For the first time in Silky Way, Vu presents a work made entirely of chiffon – apart from its wooden frame. Chiffon, traditionally produced from silk, here entirely replaces the linen. Through its multilayered, semi-transparent quality, the work dissolves the boundaries between painting, collage, and object altogether, asserting itself as an installation that activates space and conveys moments of transition and threshold. On his choice of material, the artist states:
“With chiffon I recognize above all its semi-transparent quality: it does not fully cover but allows light and the forms behind it to shine through. Thus the viewer can perceive both the surface of the chiffon and the structure of the frame, producing a double visual experience. For me, chiffon carries an inherent lightness and is easy to handle – adding, removing, folding, layering, dyeing, or painting – without destroying the structure of the frame. It is like a thin skin that both conceals and reveals the frame. At this moment the frame is no longer merely a technical support for the work, but becomes part of the visual language of the artwork.”
While Vu formally draws on Minimal Art and engages references to both conceptual textile art and process art, he develops a distinct and clearly defined formal vocabulary that thrives on the tension of material and form. His precisely placed, reduced gestures unfold a narrative quality equal to that of the materials themselves.
Eliza Grabarek M.A.
© Text and Photo Courtesy of Galerie kajetan
