Mylinh Nguyen was born in 1982 in Brittany, France. With a double diploma in the arts (DMA in metal sculpture from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Appliqués et de Métiers d’Art Olivier de Serres and DMA in textiles from the Ecole Supérieure des Arts Appliqués Duperré), she was trained by Fred Barnley and specialized in the machining of coarse metals. Putting this singular technique to good use and to the test, she developed a series of sculptures and single-piece objects. In 2020, she decided to explore a different medium, polymer clay, using the same skills she had mastered in modelling metal.
Her work has received numerous prestigiously rewards and recognition in Europe. In 2013, she received the Bettencourt Schueller Foundation’s prize pour L’intelligence de la main (for the Intelligence of the Hand) in the category of exceptional talent for the Méduses sculpture series. In 2015, she was a resident at Villa Kujoyama (Kyoto, Japan), where she transformed her practice by cultivating new skills related to modelling. In 2017, she was named academician for the Fondation Hermès. In 2022 she was invited to the prestigious residency program in Villa Medici in Italy.
About the work
By sculpting elements as innocent as flowers, dry grass, blackberries or even a few revisited seeds, Mylinh Nguyen invites us to encounter strangeness for a moment of immobility or, conversely, a perpetual movement as if these plants only obeyed their own instinct.
Their volume, however many times observed, is adorned with new dimensions, from a work that borrows from geometry in space to restore their intrinsic originality.
The new works of Mylinh Nguyen designed from polymer resin, bring us into a nature whose refinement commands admiration. From the physiognomy of living or extinct plant species, the artist produces fascinating works where her mastery of techniques finds new approaches while building a little more of her universe, her signature, made of poetry and precision. None of her artistic gestures are due to chance.
"Recently, I left behind me the world of machines and the din of metal to work empty-handed. With modelling, I invent a panoply of new, light gestures, and have kept no tradition of the trades of art than the essential: the taste for detail, the sense of finishing, the joy of seeking the perfect gesture. I build little corners of nature, to breathe in. I imagine quiet places, places of peace. Worlds in balance, where the void is combined with the full". (the artist's words)
About Autumn and the Faded flowers Collections: Sculptures in polymer clay.
The collection of faded flowers tells us about every moment when flowers start to age; tiny rustling of petals, quivering of color. Here we are celebrating the passing of time, the grace that is born after youth.