Mai Văn Nhơn

About

b. 1960, Đồng Nai, Vietnam. Lives and works in Biên Hòa, Đồng Nai — where ceramics have been made for more than a century.

Mai Văn Nhơn learned to paint from his father, an independent painter working in ink wash, calligraphy and oil. At thirteen he was the principal poster painter for a local cinema. He went on to make souvenir paintings and to work in industrial design, without ever stopping his work in oil, and has worked independently throughout.

In 2006 he began researching ceramic glazes and working out how to build portraits from ceramic fragments: glazes of his own formulation, brushed onto thin clay slabs and fired by artisans at Biên Hòa kilns, then broken and cut into place. In 2010 he made a fifty-metre section of the Hà Nội Ceramic Mosaic Mural along the Red River. In 2017 he was commissioned by the Government of Viet Nam to make twenty-one ceramic portraits of the leaders of the APEC economies, presented as state gifts at the APEC Summit in Đà Nẵng. In the same year he held a solo exhibition at the Vietnam National Museum of Fine Arts, Hà Nội.

In recent years he has worked on a group of large-scale ceramic portraits of Vietnamese cultural figures.

Training

Exhibitions

* The official annual exhibition for the provinces and cities of southeastern Vietnam. It is organised by the Vietnam Fine Arts Association, which also selects the works; a different province hosts it each year.

** A national exhibition marking eighty years of Vietnamese independence, directed and organised by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism; works were selected by the Department of Fine Arts, Photography and Exhibitions.

Awards

Public Art & Commissions

Collections

Memberships