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Capricorn Rising · 2018 · Oil and tempera on wood panel · © Julien Nguyen, courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery
Julien Nguyen
Painter of precisely rendered tableaus that collapse biblical themes, science fiction, and the faces of intimates into a single frame.
Julien Nguyen paints in Los Angeles with the deliberation of a manuscript illuminator and the references of a crate-digger. Fra Angelico, Jean Giraud, classical myth, speculative futures — all surface in oil and tempera on panel, executed with a watchmaker's hand.
The figures are often people he knows, faces borrowed from intimacy and recast in scenes that slide between devotional painting and science fiction. Biblical subjects treated with Quattrocento clarity, then shot through with contemporary unease.
His work appeared in the 2017 Whitney Biennial and has been shown at Swiss Institute, Kunstverein München, and the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati. The paintings hold a single conviction: reality lives in the act of being understood.
On the web at
matthewmarks.com / Nguyen →
- Added
- 2026-05-12
- Region
- Los Angeles, CA
- Has .art domain
- No
- Socials
- Site
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