On October 4, at Eight Gallery, Vu Bich Thuy - a Hanoi-based artist known for her devotion to abstract painting for over three decades - will present her third solo exhibition, titled The Mysterious Garden.

The exhibition features more than 20 of her latest works, marking the first time she has held a solo show in Ho Chi Minh City.

The highlight of The Mysterious Garden lies in her series of paintings on duplex paper – a material she explores for the first time, alongside her familiar canvas works. The collection reveals a rich range of spatial structures and emotional expressions.

Speaking to VietNamNet, Vu Bich Thuy shared that she doesn’t begin with sketches but lets spontaneity lead the way, refining and distilling as she goes. She likens her creative process to a journey from the invisible to the visible, where rationality and surprise move in tandem: “You can’t rely solely on randomness. You have to seek, and in that search, unexpected things arise.”

To her, color is emotion, while lines feel architectural. In this exhibition, her brushstrokes overlap, intertwine, both soft and assertive, creating multidimensional space. It’s a play between natural flow and control, guiding viewers through a spectrum of feelings – from vivid and free to quiet and contemplative.

Although not intentionally using Vietnamese identity as a compass, Thuy acknowledges that being born and raised in Vietnam has deeply imprinted the landscape, people, and customs into her subconscious. As a result, no matter where she paints, traces of home subtly surface in her work.

Collector Tran Hau Tuan described the exhibition as a poetic space: “A lyrical atmosphere envelops the works, rendered in a style of abstract landscape that evokes an imagined vegetation. In this serene setting, Thuy’s paintings lead viewers into a gentle garden of romantic emotions, where plants and flowers appear with the hues and fragrance of a morning still drenched in night’s dew.”

According to him, Vu Bich Thuy has chosen a middle path between abstraction and representation – what could be called semi-figurative. This approach allows her paintings to spark imagination while offering grounding elements from the real world, drawing the viewer into a dreamlike state that floats between illusion and reality.