Hung Viet Nguyen creates astonishingly textured work that shapes the natural world and its landscapes into something completely original and intuitively insightful. Painting from memory of locations visited or entirely from his imagination, he shapes exquisite fables about nature and the relationship of human beings to it. His paintings are precise, with multiple layers of meaning, which mirror the many layers of mosaic-like paint in each work. The artist’s images express a reverence for the beautiful, for nature, and for the mysterious and spiritual. Each is powerful, deeply moving, and expressive. In some recent works, Nguyen has included what could be a glimpse of another world hovering in the sky, or a gate, an arched portal to another life or dimension. At times, he’s introduced small human figures into his landscapes. The work in his new series, Chances Matter, marks a new direction for the artist. While continuing his masterful work in oil and palette knife, building up and manipulating his paint as if sculpting it, he now paints human subjects with a greater emphasis in his lustrous natural landscapes. The prominence of humans speaks to both our coexistence in nature, but also addressing our effect upon it. Referencing climate change and our self-absorption with our cell phones that may preclude our ability to be one with the natural environment around us.