Rémy Gastambide
Born on January the 1st 1969 in Saigon (Vietnam), Rémy Bac Ai was then adopted by a French-Swiss couple, the Gastambide, and he grew up in Reims. After studying academic arts & drawing at the E.SA.A.G. shool of Art, Paris, ans the Kingston Polytechnic, London, from 1989 to 1992, Rémy turned to photo journalism. His pasion of photography and Press reportage is rooted in his early teenagehood, when discovering the most famous Vietnam war photopraphs. Between 1992 up to 1997, Rémy pursuied a photographic essay on the Amerasian of Vietnam (Children born from US soldiers & Vietnamese woman). Eyewitnessing the plight of mixed race people generation, born in theformer South Vietnam during the Vietnam war (1965-1975), Rémy interrogated his own Black Amerasian identity & back ground. His work has been widely published in the French & foreign press, and was shown in exhibitions in France and abroad, since 1994.
Today, turns back to drawing and painting. Chosing the theme of Buddhism, he explores the foundations of his "faith" in this philosophy, charing the fruit of his own experience as a Buddhist, areligion followed when been young under the guidance of the Buddhist mon, Master Thich Nhat Hanh, at Plum Village, and in other pagodas. Rémy signs his canvases and paper lay out Nguyen Bac Ai, that is his original name. Revisiting the main figures of the Buddhist "pantheon, Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, Arahats, Gardians...Rémy also offers a certain pictural influence of his four major favourite artist & model: Egon Schiel (Austria), Akuin Ekaku (Japan), Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (Italy), Mathias Grunewald (Germany). He then moved on to the painting on canvases and paper, which he likes.
Rémy bac Ai's work has been exhibited during the last six years. Rémy was a recipient of a grant awarded by the D.A.C. and the A.F.A.A.. He is also referenced as one of the most promissing young vietnamese artist, in the book of the author Corinne de Ménonville.
Rémy gastambide Nguyen Bac Ai has the desire to paint his very personnal religious iconography in a pagoda. He claims this task as the very reason of his artistic evolution and achivement.
