TMU (United States)
Trang Mỹ Uyen (TMU) is an artistic collaboration between Mary “Trang” Nguyen and Denise “Mỹ Uyen” Nguyen. The artists’ alias combines their Vietnamese given birth-names: Trang and Mỹ Uyen. In Vietnam, Trang is a popular girls name whose meaning is defined as: serious, intelligent one; whereas Mỹ Uyen means beautiful (Mỹ) wisdom (Uyen). The similarities between the women’s names perhaps prophesied what was to become a deep bond between the women and their profound connection endures— a kinship especially evident in their artistic collaboration which features cohesive paintings that feel as if they were conceived of and executed by a single person rather than by way of partnership.
Depicted in this series are the pastoral landscape of the Hamptons, imagery that
remains etched in memory from summers spent on Long Island where Mary recalls wandering the idyllic shores and cliff sides of Montauk as a child. The sensations and scenery experienced all those years ago planted seeds of ambition that would later be harvested when Mary moved to New York City in her early twenties to make the American dream her own reality.
The work of Trang Mỹ Uyen goes beyond the physical landscape of Long Island. These oil paintings convey the expansive imagination of adolescence. Depictions of landscapes of the sea and surrounding cliffs are reinterpreted through the tender looking-glass of an adult fondly recalling the sentimentality of youth.
Through a distinct style that combines geometric abstraction with modern landscape, each section of the rocky terrain is leveled down, reduced to its fundamental elements. The scenery is expressed in colorful patterns that recall the playful aesthetic of paint- by-number paintings that were popular throughout the 1970s and 80s, once again drawing inspiration from her youth. Each work is composed of tiny jigsaw puzzle pieces that together create a tapestry of sky, sea and land. They are at once nostalgic and contemporary— a metaphor for one’s own life, experienced over so many years yet remembered only through short but impactful moments.
TMU has exhibited throughout the United States and their work was recently acquired and can now be found in the permanent collections of NYU’s Langone Hospital in the Hamptons. I le gallery is proud to present their work for the first time in Europe.
