The exhibition features Tuan Anh’s latest surreal paintings which were created in 2015, two years after his settlement in Solingen, a small city in Germany.

In Tuan Anh’s previous works, the countryside has been the spiritual foundation which forms the basis of his practice, dominating his perception and approach to art-making. Having to relocate to Germany in 2013 means that the artist has been uprooted from his source of inspiration, leaving him in an in-between state, neither here nor there. And this uncertainty is reflected strongly in his solo show at Manzi.

Combining contradictory conditions of dream and reality, in this series of work, Do Tuan Anh painted unnerving, illogical scenes with photographic precision and created strange creatures with everyday objects. By showing his quirky side, pairing up people and animals with wit and irony, the artist is telling a surrealist tale in an oriental way.