Writings
Symbolic Red: Hermann Nitsch’s 20th Painting Action (3/4)
By Chau Nguyen
In Hermann Nitsch’s 20th Painting Action, presented by Zuecca Projects in Venice, a monumental poured painting measuring approximately five by twenty metres occupies the front wall, while a ten-by-ten-metre splatter painting stretches across the floor. Nitsch emerged from Viennese Actionism in the 1960s and developed his Malaktionen, or “painting actions,” alongside performances concerned with sacrifice, ritual, existential excess, and sensory catharsis. The installation offers an interpretation of red as a symbolic color.
Conceptual Red: Anish Kapoor at the Hayward Gallery (2/4)
By Chau Nguyen
Anish Kapoor, Hayward Gallery, London, UK, 16 June–18 October 2026
In Anish Kapoor’s retrospective at the Hayward Gallery, red operates as an ideology. Kapoor turns red into a visceral condition through which the viewer encounters questions of matter, power, violence, sacrifice, and the divine.
Reading Red (1/4)
Lacquer Red: Materiality, Memory, and Genealogy
by Chau Nguyen
Lacquer red might as well be a myth. I found myself in a diasporic relationship with the color: The peculiar intimacy produced by distance, in which the homeland becomes less a place than an accumulation of images, sensations, and memories. Diasporic artists frequently develop a quasi-obsessive relationship with the locations from which they have been separated, attempting to retrieve through objects and images what geography has rendered unstable. For nearly two years, I sifted through page after page of lacquerware catalogues, commercial archives, photographs, and digital reproductions, trying to locate the red that I remembered.
Between Memory and AI
By Chau Nguyen
In the age of AI, with the easy manipulation of photos and deepfakes, I find myself recalling the genealogy of images. Distinguishing AI-generated videos from real ones has become increasingly challenging, while digitally rejuvenating faces in photographs has become routine. My memory becomes an anchor to the credibility of my existence.
From Tilted Arc to Running Arcs: Richard Serra, Art Laws, and Legacy
By Chau Nguyen & Eric Orts
In the United States, the First Amendment is often invoked as a major safeguard of artistic expression. Still, as Serra’s unsuccessful bid to save Tilted Arc, it provides uneven protection in practice, especially when an individual artist confronts powerful corporations or governments that might employ top lawyers to draft sophisticated contracts and engage in litigation. Legal outcomes in this field are rarely predictable and often asymmetrical.
Henri Rousseau Deserves More Than Our Condescension (Artnet)
By Chau Nguyen & Eric Orts
Overall, the exhibition reads as a lukewarm induction of Henri Rousseau into the proverbial boys club, a belated embrace of an artist whose market value and critical esteem escalated only posthumously. His work nonetheless asserts itself with striking clarity.