Underdog Suite: Photographs and Collages 1998-2009

Book info: Underdog Suite: Photographs and Collages 1998-2009 (Hardcover, 312 pages) – Scheidegger and Spiess, 2010. Language: English.

Over the past ten years, Vietnam-born Swiss photographer Cat Tuong Nguyen has gained international recognition for his highly individual, intelligent, and poetic work. Nguyen’s photos confront viewers with strange, humorous, and mysterious images, challenging them to investigate their everyday reality. The first book to collect Nguyen’s art, Underdog Suite brings together in one volume his photographs, collages, and unique painted-over magazine pictures.

            Arranged in an unconventional and highly original manner that mirrors Nguyen’s own unusual approach to art, Underdog Suite presents nearly the complete oeuvre of this extraordinary young artist. Far from a mere monographic overview, it is, rather, a book-shaped self-portrait of an artist who reacts with great intelligence and lyrical sensitivity to his everyday world—and reflects this sensibility and curiosity in his stunning images.

            A beautiful and unusual book, Underdog Suite introduces the work of this rapidly emerging artist to a larger audience.

Cat Tuong Nguyen was educated as a photographer at the School of Art and Design, Zurich. His work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions at the Fotomuseum Winterthur and the Helmhaus Zurich, the Cité des Internationale des Arts in Paris, and the Forum of Photography in Cologne, among other museums and galleries in Switzerland and France.