The realism of Dung's artwork is striking, over the newspaper background, the artist's subjects are brought to life with chiselled details and shadows. By painting on newspaper on canvas, the world’s events become the real canvas on which the artist is painting, so that he can represent the personal lives of the people through the evolving and ever changing world.

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The industrious and persevering nature of the Vietnamese people is brilliantly illustrated by Nguyen Tuan Dung’s primary subject; the modest bicycle. Human figures are absent in his paintings but his hyperrealist bicycles brimming with flowers and fruits renders them unnecessary.

 

The well-worn bicycle reveals the travels of labourers between farm and city, of vendors carrying goods for sale and tells stories of children being transported home from school.

 

"My Art studies have left me with a puzzling question: How to truthfully share the personal identity of the characters I see living around me? I couldn’t achieve this through my portraits and landscapes, until I realised the potential of the objects. Sometimes personal objects can reveal so much more than what we see at first glance.”