About
HAI HOANG (Hoàng Long Hải, b. 2003, Vietnam) is a painter based in London and Hanoi. Hai is a 2025 First Class graduate of Kingston School of Art, where he was nominated for the Freelands Painting Prize. His work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions across the UK and Vietnam.
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ARTIST STATEMENT:
Hai Hoang makes quiet paintings that explore themes of nostalgia and memories. In his work, he depicts lonely men, children or small birds in a deep melancholy or contemplation. Taking references from old photos, either historical or personal, the subjects are placed in deep jungles and reflective surfaces, occasionally urban houses far in the horizon, where, even though they are lost in an unknown place, they are always full of life and freedom. Hai sees his body of work as a pathway to escape the vortex of daily life, to enter an idealised, harmonious world, where it feels safe to be emotionally vulnerable.
Hai works with oil paint, thinned with a lot of turpentine and oil-based medium. Hai enjoys engaging with the unpredictability of thin paint spreading and staining on the canvas. Paint-layering creates visual depth to reflect emotional depth and introspection, which are both important ideas in Hai’s practices. Hai’s painting method is a mixture of painting liberally on one hand and having to paint intentionally on the other, to bring harmony to both. For points of reference, Hai actively searches a mix of historical photographic materials or personal photo albums, and reinterpret them using his own creative language. Hai's paintings are a space between the ambiguity of memory and the clarity of archival knowledge - an undefined area between space, history, and time. Hai balances clarity and abstraction, creating atmospheric spaces where time feels suspended. It is in these deep moments of introspection that one can find the answer to the irrationalities and anxiety of social realities, where many problems can either be easily solved or do not matter through the lens of nostalgia.