‘These paintings act as memento to my memory of rainy weather whilst reading books in the public library of Saigon, an iconic modernist building of this city, seeing the foliage outside via a layer of concrete brise soleil, admiring the transformation from sunlight to rain.’

Devoid of human forms, “Solar Noon” series is a shift towards non-figurative imagery in Phan’s practice. The paintings draw on the design legacy of brise soleil screens, a system of perforated cladding popular in south-east Asia in the 20th century. The 226cm height of the paintings references the Modulor Man of Le Corbusier. This system of proportions was used by iconic architects Vann Molyvann in Cambodia and Ngo Viet Thu in Vietnam, and also references the artist’s own height of 153cm. The work takes further influence from modernist practitioners who blurred the boundaries between art, design and architecture, including Diem Phung Thi (1920–2002), Nasreen Mohamedi (1937–90), and Eileen Gray (1878–1976). Painted in muted translucent shades, one image depicts an abstracted sequence of interconnecting stairways and architectural elements. Others take inspiration from the geometric grid-like designs of brise soleil. —SN