Harper’s is pleased to announce Still Beauty, Quebec-based artist Tuan Vu’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. The presentation features new works by Vu and opens November 13, 6–8pm, with a reception attended by the artist.
For Vu, painting is about the pursuit of beauty. To paint is to uncover the harmonious balance of light, color, and shadow that hides in plain sight, for it’s this glimmer of beauty that provides reprieve within a world suffering from humanmade destruction. Throughout Still Beauty, Vu is on a quest to capture these ephemeral moments of enchantment. The artist paints bewitching vignettes: tropical landscapes bloom in spellbinding hues embedded within gilded frames. Arched doorways and rectangular linework serve as windows to serene worlds, untarnished by the forces that await outside of them.
In works like The Reader, Vu invokes aesthetic enchantment through a visual language inspired by France’s nineteenth century Nabis painters—an approach Vu frequently embraces throughout Still Beauty. These post-Impressionist painters sought to center invention in the art of painting itself. Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, Édouard Vuillard, and their cohort believed that painters should not strive to depict the likeness of the world but instead conjure symbols, metaphors, and patterns derived from it.
Vu embodies this effort in The Reader, weaving light and shadow to fabricate arcane oases. Here, a glimmering fountain pulses at the center of a mystical paradise. The exterior scene reflects a beaming courtyard surrounded by lush foliage and towering arches. This ornate patio glows molten orange and emerald green with patterned tiles flickering beneath soft dusk. Surrounding the view, frames pull the onlooker inward into reverie, underscoring the artifice of the radiant world he portrays.
Within Geometry of Shadows, Vu deepens his dialogue with ornamental and spatial play. The artist immerses the viewer within a labyrinth of passageways with tiled geometry, each entrance offering a fragment of a dream. Sinuous vegetation bends toward the patterned ground, while frescoed figures seem to rise from the walls, as if caught between the material and imagined world. Here, the frame is a tessellation of violet and turquoise, mirroring the hypnotic rhythm of the scene it encloses. In this work, Vu extends the Nabis painters’ fascination with the decorative plane, crafting a world where pattern becomes atmosphere and beauty unfurls a pathway to transcendence.
Ultimately, throughout Still Beauty, Vu draws spectacles of exquisite harmony between color and form. It is at this intersection where beauty becomes a refuge. His canvases shimmer with the quiet insistence that this capacious world is not frivolous, but rather necessary, offering a balm against the world’s mounting discord and proof of the human capacity to still wonder.
Tuan Vu (b. 1971, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam) attended University of Montreal in 2016-7, and received a BA from University of Sherbrooke, QC, in 1995. Vu was twice-awarded a grant from Canada Council for the Arts (2024 and 2023); in 2021, he was the recipient of the Luxembourg Art Prize. His work has been the subject of presentations at Hjellegjerde Gallery, London (2024); Duran Marshaal Gallery, Montreal (2024); Simard Bilodeau Gallery, Los Angeles (2023); Institut National Art Contemporain, Montreal (2022); and LivArt, Montreal (2021), among other institutions. Most recently, Vu has participated in group exhibitions at Make Room, Los Angeles (2025); Patel Brown, Montreal (2025); Art SG, Singapore (2025 and 2024); The Armory Show, New York (2025 and 2024); Gallery Reveal, Bordeaux (2024); Simard Bilodeau Gallery, Los Angeles (2024 and 2023); Duran Marshaal Gallery, Montreal (2024 and 2023); Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, Berlin (2023); and Maison de culture Sud-Ouest, Montreal (2023). His work has been acquired by institutions, including The Bunker Artspace, Palm Beach; Fidelity Investments, Boston; and Holbar Collection, UK. Vu lives and works in Montreal.