Lot 1. Julien Nguyen (b. 1990), Kye, Semper Solus, oil and tempera on wood panel, 91.4 by 55.8 cm. 36 by 22 in. Executed in 2017. Lot sold: 453,600 GBP (Estimate: 40,000 - 60,000 GBP). © Sotheby's 2022
Provenance: Modern Art, London
Private Collection (acquired directly from the above)
Acquired from the above by the present owner.
Exhibited: London, Stuart Shave/Modern Art, Julien Nguyen: Ex Forti Dulcedo, May – June 2018
Cincinnati, Contemporary Arts Center, Julien Nguyen: Returns, February – June 2019.
Note: Julien Nguyen is a painter of extraordinary skill whose works take as much influence from Renaissance paintings as they do from gaming aesthetics. His practice is at once deeply academic, informed by the philosophies and aesthetic precedents of art history, and immediately colloquial, populated by his friends and contemporaries. The present work is one of the artist’s most important to date. As described by critic Mimi Chu: “Kye Semper Solus (2018) is perhaps autobiographical: a long, statuesque figure is depicted sitting dreamily at an easel. White calligraphic markings wind whimsically up his arm and face, which rhyme with a pen portrayed in his hand. In contrast with the works in the rest of the show, the perspective is off-kilter, with the lines of the easel trailing obliquely into a murky background. Isolated in an indefinite space, the figure might be seen as an allegory for Nguyen’s own process of skewing conventional forms. Ex Forti Dulcedo. Out of strength, sweetness.” (Mimi Chu, ‘The Gospel According to Julien Nguyen, Frieze, May 2018, online).
Raphael (1483-1520), Bindo Altoviti, c. 1515, oil on panel, 59.7 x 43.8 cm, Samuel H. Kress Collection, K1239. © 2022 Samuel H. Kress Foundation.
Nguyen takes a huge amount of influence from the Italian renaissance. He has created works after Leonardo da Vinci, Caravaggio, and Piero della Francesca. The present work recalls the attenuated precision of Raphael, whose portraiture provided precedent for the exact and precise mode of depiction that Nguyen deploys here. Nguyen has spoken about his reliance on this period: “I’m drawn to certain artists and certain ways of making, certain techniques of depiction, that tend to come from the early Renaissance. But it’s a question of method, not style. During this period, painting became a form of philosophical play. The way in which these artists began to think about and collect art is actually very similar to where contemporary art ended up in the twentieth century. Renaissance painters did not simply try to reproduce what was in front of them or arrange pleasing shapes in a field but sought to bring something into life through an analogous process of physically constructing or building or growing it in their pictures. Take the landscapes in the backgrounds of many Renaissance paintings, where painters took elements from their own region and projected them onto Palestine or Egypt or wherever the tale is set. They’re constructed like stages, like dioramas, or like maps in a video game. The conjuring aspect is really powerful. I’ll say this in the language of the time: They’re bringing to life their own genius” (Julien Nguyen cited in: Travis Diehl, ‘Julien Nguyen: Julien Nguyen on the Renaissance, conjury, and painting himself’, Artforum, July 2021, online).
Sotheby's. The Now Evening Auction, London, 14 October 2022
NDB: I'm so proud of my nephew Julien ! Congratulations to him.