Tomas Vu

Tomas Vu produced Flatland I-XX, a series of twenty unique prints, at the Neiman Center in 2008-2009. He employed several techniques including screenprint and collage to build richly layered, fantastical scenes depicting cycles of destruction, decay and rebirth. The prints can be installed individually or altogether in a grid, the later highlights the dynamic play of light and shadow that is central to the series as Vu explained, “Through Flatland I have created a landscape that allows for the amalgamation of opposing and conflicting forces: destruction and recovery, chaos and clarity, brutality and civility. . . This perceptual power play, the excessively waged war between light and dark, is embodied not only in the use of chiaroscuro but the exposure of the many contradicitons.”

Tomas Vu (b. 1963 Saigon, Vietnam) moved with his family to El Paso, Texas at the age of 10. He received a BFA from the University of Texas, El Paso in 1987 and a MFA from Yale University in 1990. He currently lives and works in New York City where he holds the LeRoy Neiman Professorship in Visual Arts and serves as Artistic Director at the LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies at Columbia University. Vu has exhibited in the United States and internationally including exhibitions in China, Japan, Italy. His work has been included in notable exhibitions at MoMA P.S.1 Queens, NY; the Sunshine Museum in Songzhuang, China; and the Hack Museum in Ludwigshafen, Germany. Vu’s Flatland was installed in a one-person exhibition at Sonoma State University, CA in 2012. He has received numerous awards including the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Award and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellowship.

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