On social media, Thanh Dang refers to himself as Họa sĩ Vũ Trụ (“The Cosmic Painter”), a nickname that simply happened, like so much in his orbit. His paintings often bear an upside down signature, which sometimes leads viewers to hang the work in reverse and reflects a sensibility that resists linear interpretation. Socially detached, Thanh experiences periods of withdrawal and isolation as frequently as he turns to social media, using it as a space to express bursts of hyperactivity through sudden threads of thought and poetry. Through those periods, he achieves extraordinary clarity, and we witness flashes of feeling that seem both impulsive and precise in those paintings.
There’s a certain extraterrestrial logic to his practice. His art is wild, expansive, and unbound by convention. With a quick and mischievous wit, he is gentle but never dull, kind yet sharply perceptive. This tension shows up in his work. Subjects include “liberated women,” as he calls them, alongside ironically romanticized social observations. His neutral palette bursts with a single color—orange, red, or pink—feminine, unbothered, rebellious.