Bangkok--27 Sep--TQPR MEDIA 4
"Fantasy from Hokusai's Courtiers Crossing a Bridge"
MEDIA RELEASE
27 September 2018
Galerie Quynh is thrilled to present with a necessary dose of surrealism to go through the spaces between men – an exhibition of new work by Hoang Duong Cam. This highly anticipated show, Hoang's sixth solo with the gallery, features new sculptures and some of the artist's most ambitious paintings to date.
For Hoang Duong Cam the task of the artist is akin to an acrobatic feat of tightrope-walking between contradictions. Formal and conceptual opposites recur in this new body of works, straddling jutting and flat surfaces, melancholic and vivid palettes, grand and minor narratives, external and internal worlds.
The series of paintings and sculptures deftly traverses these opposing realms and manifests the artist's eclectic interest in, and critical distance from, a vast range of visual, historical and sonic materials, from ancient folklore to modern war conspiracies, from Edo-period paintings to European Surrealism, from Chopin's polonaises to Vietnamese bolero.
Influenced by the nonsensical logic and play of Dada, Hoang welcomes accidental and fragmented narratives to leave traces on his compositions. Gesturing at multiple significations instead of grasping at a singular meaning, each work sustains a psychological balance among the chaotic forces of histories that fuel his vital mind.
Hoang continues his practice of weaving personal history and larger historical narratives but delves into the multi-faceted, ever-shifting and ever-colliding nature of borderlines – moving between those pertaining to history, geography, and those dividing rationality from the subconscious. Exploring the diverse interactions between these borders, Hoang focuses on the surreal spaces between them, and the act of "going through" such spaces. Defined by liminality and the baffling unease that stems from it, the in-between space gives rise to substantial experiences indescribable by the rationality of words and reasoning, expressible only through means of fleeting emotions, as well as a sense of lingering curiosity and confusion. Hoang links these liminal experiences to the Zen concept of cong án (k?an/gong'an), a meditative exercise of diverting one's perspective from rationality to search for awareness of the true nature of matters. In his own cong án, Hoang turns away from linear, clear-cut narratives to search for insight and honesty through abstract, innate contemplations. Recognizable images from historic photos are replaced by vibrant silhouettes of the negative space between their borders, cut out and re-arranged, flipped and layered.
A fixation on often irreconcilable distance winds through the series, whether it's the gap between ambition and resignation, between the heroic and the condemned in a nation's history, or between calculated composition and inexplicable effect. Diving into intermediate spaces as an adroit painter and thinker endowed with endless meditations and digressions, Hoang disturbs these normative borders of past-present, north-south, east-west, craftsmanship-conceptuality. With a painting referencing Duchamp's mystical last work, Étant donnes, an ever bizarre and erotic landscape that could only be seen through two peep-holes on an old wooden door, Hoang obliquely invites viewers to embrace his work, and the world, with a private, and necessarily imaginative, exercises in looking. To see past, or around, the man-made borders that separate and compartmentalize time, territory and men is perhaps the reward of the work on the part of the viewer. The sensual and indecipherable figures floating across the visceral canvas are forever on the verge of bleeding into something else, an endlessly protean journey, patiently open to polyphonic readings.
GALERIE QUYNH CONTEMPORARY ART
ABOUT HOANG DUONG CAM
With a career spanning over two decades, Hoang has participated in numerous exhibitions and
biennales in Asia, North America, and Europe. Notable exhibitions include The Atlas of Clouds, Francois Schneider Foundation, Wattwiller, France; Sunshower: Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia 1980s to Now, Mori Art Museum and The National Art Center, Tokyo, Japan; Eagles Fly, Sheep Flock: Biographical Imprints – Artistic Practices in Southeast Asia, curated by Khim Ong for Art Stage Singapore 2015: Southeast Asia Platform; Electronic Pacific, SOMArts, San Francisco; VideoZone 5, the 5th International Video Art Biennial, Tel Aviv, Israel; Daegu Photo Biennale, Daegu, South Korea; Arts and Cities, Aichi Triennale, Nagoya, Japan; Connect: Art Scene Vietnam, if Galerie Berlin and Stuttgart, Germany; Fluid Zone, Jakarta Biennale, Indonesia; Post-Doi Moi: Vietnamese Art After 1990, Singapore Art Museum, Singapore; the 3rd Guangzhou Triennial, Guangdong Museum, Guangzhou, China; Migration Addicts (Mogas Station), a collateral event of the 52nd Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy; Thermocline of Art. New Asian Waves, ZKM | Museum of Contemporary Art, Karlsruhe, Germany; and Belief (Mogas Station), Singapore Biennale 2006. In 2009 he held a residency at the acclaimed Tokyo Wonder Site, Japan. Hoang Duong Cam lives and works in Ho Chi Minh City.
ABOUT GALERIE QUYNH
Recognized as Vietnam's leading contemporary art gallery, Galerie Quynh has been promoting contemporary art practice in the country for almost two decades. The gallery is known internationally for its consistently focused programming and educational initiatives. Working with a select group of emerging, mid-career and established Vietnamese artists, the gallery also exhibits the work of distinguished artists from around the world. In keeping with its mission to develop a sustainable ecosystem for the arts in Vietnam, the gallery collaborates with artists, curators, museums and art spaces locally and internationally to organize talks and lectures as well as to produce publications in English and Vietnamese. In May 2014 the gallery founded the non-profit educational initiative Sao La. Currently spearheaded by Ho Chi Minh City-based artists Nguyen Kim To Lan and Nguyen Duc Dat, Sao La comprises a young, diverse group of passionate creatives working loosely as a collective.
A new chapter began in December 2017 when the gallery moved to a 600 sqm space in Dakao, District 1. Spread over four floors, the gallery is able to produce more ambitious programming and play an even more vital role in the cultural community in Vietnam.
www.galeriequynh.com
GALERIE QUYNH CONTEMPORARY ART
Artist: Hoang Duong Cam
Exhibition Title: with a necessary dose of surrealism to go through the spaces between men
Exhibition Dates: September 7 – October 13, 2018
Venue: Galerie Quynh
118 Nguyen Van Thu, Dakao, District 1, Ho Chi Minh City
Contacts: Ms. Celine Alexandre –
[email protected]
Ms. Nguyen Khanh Huyen –
[email protected]
Telephone: +84 28 3822 7218
Hours: 10am – 7pm, Tuesday – Saturday, and by appointment