Tia-Thuy Nguyen turns clouds, steel and light into Fields of Resonance in Shanghai

At Almine Rech Shanghai, Vietnamese artist Tia-Thuy Nguyen expands her long-running study of clouds into a material landscape where beadwork, quartz, oil paint and stainless steel are activated by light.

Fields of Resonance, on view from August 28 to October 31, 2026, brings together twenty paintings, sculptures and installations. Rather than treating the cloud as an isolated image, Nguyen uses it as a point of departure for a broader investigation into how the self, nature and physical matter can enter a state of resonance.

The exhibition develops a visual language the artist has explored since 2018, when cloudscapes became closely connected to memories of her father, a former pilot. Here, however, the emphasis shifts from representation toward energy. Materials with apparently incompatible qualities are placed in dialogue: soft oil paint meets resistant steel, fragile beads sit beside quartz, and solid surfaces are made to appear suspended or transient.

Light provides the connection between these different bodies of work. Nguyen describes it as a living entity rather than simply illumination. As visitors move through the gallery, reflections travel across quartz, beads and polished metal, continuously changing the apparent density and depth of the works.

This transformation is particularly evident in the quartz works. In Another Day of Sun, fragments of quartz, recycled glass and beads condense into a dense, luminous surface. The physical weight of the material contrasts with the atmospheric subject, turning the cloud into something simultaneously geological and ephemeral.

Oil painting remains an important counterpoint. In Passionate in Supernatural, colour carries the moisture and charged stillness of a sky after rain. Turquoise, violet, orange and gold collide and gradually open into areas of light, giving the canvas the sense of a weather system that has not quite settled.

The most significant material shift comes through stainless steel. The Pause Between Storms introduces Nguyen’s hand-woven steel technique, forcing an industrial material into the language of weaving. Fine metal strands form airy cloud structures whose rigidity seems to dissolve under light. For Nguyen, this encounter between strength and delicacy also creates a dialogue between industrial hardness, handwork and femininity.

In Enduring Vitality, the same material becomes a line drawing released from the page. Stainless steel traces the branches of an ancient tree across the gallery, allowing the image to occupy walls, floor and air. Instead of emphasizing the tree’s conventional associations with weight and rootedness, Nguyen turns it into a suspended figure, using light and shadow to suggest release and weightlessness.

Many Contradictory Flowers extends this idea of accumulated energy into a new flower series. Blossoming becomes less a botanical event than the visible result of stored vitality, with reflective surfaces reaching their fullest expression only when activated by light and by the movement of the viewer.

The exhibition is deliberately non-linear. Large works establish an overall field before smaller objects draw attention toward detail, material and reflection. Nguyen does not prescribe a route through the gallery. Instead, the changing relationship between bodies, artworks and light becomes part of the work itself, allowing perception to continually reorganize the exhibition.

Across Fields of Resonance, craftsmanship is therefore not presented simply as evidence of labour. Handwork becomes a way of condensing time and energy into matter, while light releases those qualities again in constantly changing form. The result is an exhibition that moves between painting and sculpture, solidity and atmosphere, asking how material can be made to carry something fundamentally intangible.

Information

Exhibition: Fields of Resonance
Artist: Tia-Thuy Nguyen / @tia.thuynguyen
Venue: Almine Rech Shanghai, 27 Huqiu Road, 2nd Floor, Huangpu District, Shanghai, China
Dates: August 28 – October 31, 2026
Image courtesy of Almine Rech Shanghai

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