« Et l´aventure, la plus grande aventure, c´est de voir surgir quelque chose d´inconnu chaque jour dans le même visage. »

« And the adventure, the biggest adventure, is to see something unknown springing out of the same face everyday. »

Giacometti

After two big exhibitions this winter devoted to Jean-Michel Basquiat and
Pierre et Gilles, the Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont offers you to discover Anh Duong, a young artist still unrecognized in France, whose painting is already very appreciated in New York where she lives, and whose works are already included in very renowned collections.

Previously an internationally famous model, she inspired the greatest designers from Christian Lacroix to John Galliano, and was viewed in the glossy pages of Vogue as in the lens of Andres Serrano.  Anh Duong has also proved her acting talents and recently costared alongside Sandrine Kiberlain in Laetitia Masson´s « A Vendre » (an indie success in France ) and in Lisa Cholodenko´s « High Art », Grand Prize at Sundance Festival and  major hit in last year Cannes´ Quinzaine des Réalisateurs.

Anh  Duong started painting during summer 1988 in Montauk, Long Island, and what was a hobby finally turned out to such a devouring passion that Anh Duong now devotes all her energies to it.  Her artistic obstinacy bore fruit, she is now considered as an accomplished and atypical artist, exhibited in museums (like in 1997 at the Provincial Museum of Modern Art, Ostend, Belgium.)

As her friend Julian Schnabel pointed out rightly, Anh Duong´s paintings occupy a singular place in contemporary art, as they are exclusively devoted to portraits, and first of all to her self-portrait.  Her experience as a model and an actress teached her that her own image is not a constancy but a multifaceted subject that exposes itself to her painter´s eyes differently every day, as an infinite inspiration.

Each self-portrait reflects a precise moment, a particular mood, and becomes a kind of outlet of the psychological self-analysis that she daily makes.  The titles she gives them enlighten this most obviously.

On contrary to any narcissistic sense, Anh shows herself merciless, dissecting  each wrinkle, each spot, each sign of weakness on her face or body.  As to translate this realistic and subjective vision of her own image, she uses a palette of significant colors that she directly applies on the canvas with very marked strokes.

In a society that favours a widespread aesthetic idealization, Anh Duong´s self-portraits invite us to a personal reflexion on our own vanity.