TONY HUYNH
BAY VISTAS
TONY HUYNH BAY VISTAS December 1st – January 27th Bryant Street Gallery is delighted to announce Bay Vistas, a new painting exhibition by Tony Huynh. With vibrant colors and unexpected viewpoints, Huynh’s works provide a fresh take on San Francisco and its surroundings. The show will be on display from December 1st, 2023 to January 27th, 2024. The gallery and the artist welcome the public to an opening reception on Saturday, December 9th, from 3-5 p.m. Tony Huynh’s vivacious oil paintings will look strikingly familiar to any Bay Area local. This series includes well-known landmarks such as Presidio Row, Point Reyes, the Great Highway, and Alcatraz Island. Huynh puts his own personalized spin on these areas with his distinctive style, which has a playfully saturated color palette and an intentionally primitive technique that is unburdened from laborious linework and meticulous detail. There is a blithe immediacy to his paint application and an utter lack of pretense to his compositions. This implementation of childlike wonder can be attributed to growing up in San Francisco, where a lifetime of impressions imbued significance into the places that now make up his subject matter. As a result, each painting is steeped with nostalgic whimsy, and dressed with elements from his memories, and a youthful imagination stimulated by films and animation. Each painting depicts not just a setting but, as Huynh puts it, “a snapshot of a spontaneous spot.” He gradually works layer upon layer until the painting is as close as he can get to that original idea. The initial spark can be anything from “the form of an animal or tree; the way the sea, sky, and land converge with architecture; the textures of a wall or grass; or the ways shadows bend.” In this way, each painting is less an objective study than a subjective analysis of the artist’s own interaction with the subject. Huynh graduated from California College of Fine Arts in 2009. He has exhibited his work in galleries and museums all over California, including Lancaster Museum of Art & History, Begovich Gallery, Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, and San Diego Museum of Art. He currently lives and works in Sacramento. Bay Vistas will be on view at 532 Bryant Street, Palo Alto, CA 94301 from December 1st, 2023 to January 26th, 2024. For more images and information please visit the website at www.bryantstreet.com or email us at bryanstst@mac.com
Biography: Born in San Francisco, CA, Tony Huynh lives and works in Sacramento. He received his B.F.A. at the California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco, CA. Artist Statement: Tony is an observer, looking within and out and reimagining familiar scenes. His work has a stasis between abstract and representational, and the symphony between colors and shapes tessellate the elements of nature and man made things. He draws on many sources, specifically his personal history and figments of places familiar. This reinterpretation of the familiar is combined with zen philosophy, coastal sentiment, symbolism, cull out nostalgia, surrealism from the swirl of observations from life, cinema and figment. Often working on linen and canvas, the images emerge from each brush mark during the process are in constant revision until the image calcifies. Inevitably through this natural experience invites the process to create many layers and textures that build upon the previous thoughts that could have been. The images of the vivid and melancholic provokes a search to discern what can be felt and the serene and solitude opens the space to question and contemplate, which is natural to the daydreamer. Huynh was born in San Francisco and currently lives and works in Sacramento.
Camera Obscura Oil on wood 9” x 12”
Alcatraz Island Oil on canvas 20” x 20”
Claremont Club Oil on canvas 36” x 48”
Sunset District Trio Oil on canvas 16” x 26”
Point Bonita Oil on canvas 16” x 20”
Great Highway Oil on canvas 26” x 26”
Marin Headlands Oil on wood 11” x 14”
Fort Mason Center Oil on wood 11” x 14”
View of Diebenkorn Oil on wood 9” x 12”
Presidio Row Oil on canvas 24” x 36”
Yerba Buena Island Oil on wood 12” x 15”
Streetcar Oil on wood 12” x 12”
Noriega Oil on canvas 36” x 48”
Sea Cliff to Headlands Oil on canvas 14” x 20”
Blue Water Harbor Oil on canvas 14” x 20”
Angel Island Oil on canvas 20” x 26”
Hess Vineyard Oil on wood 11” x 14”
China Beach SF Oil on canvas 16” x 26”
Cavallo Oil on canvas 14” x 20”
Point Reyes Oil on canvas 36” x 48”
Sea Cliff Window Oil on wood 10” x 10”
Ocean Beach (two surfboards) Oil on wood 9” x 12”
Alameda Condos Oil on canvas 26” x 20”