Filtering gravity

Opening: 08.10.2009 @6pm
Exhibition on view until 28.11.2009
Location: Sàn Art
3 Me Linh
District Binh Thanh
Ho Chi Minh City

 

The painting installations of Nguyen Xuan Hoang are filtered depictions of a mental and physical space where time is given a particular weightlessness. In these large-scale works, the artist has depicted common everyday objects as if they have assumed a human persona, appearing lost or misplaced in function, seemingly drifting in a space where gravity appears suspended. In these images Hoang evokes meaning through form and its gradation in color, where his tonal variations in paint appear to vibrate and blur around his floating objects. Crucial to these installations is the careful inclusion of the physical objects that these paintings illustrate – these chairs, stools and books placed in particular fashion either in front, or directly supporting the weight of the canvas. This deliberate relation, between the real and the copy, between the object and its representation, is a playful study of the philosophical spaces we inhabit in everyday life. Alluding to the assumed world of social order, observing the human obsession to categorize and place history within particular perspective, Hoang’s works quietly challenge what may seem far away and insignificant as actually looming large and compelling.

Nguyen Xuan Hoang is a young artist based in Hanoi, Vietnam. This is his first exhibition in Ho Chi Minh City.

Artist’s statement

This kind of installation painting is a new experience for me in the studying for a series of works concerning a ‘revert composition’. One kind of space I have been experiencing for the last 5 years is the rallying point between surface and depth.. For me, the horizon line does not sit behind the surface of the painting, it stands in front, which inspires me to convey the perception of a third dimension, where what is perceived as far away is actually far larger and more prominent. The paintings in this exhibition is composed of my most recent works. Combining a study of physical gravity and psychological emotions. In these works the action of human psychology is seen through the objects, such as chairs, stools and books where every position of the objects symbolize a psychological state of the human condition. The gradation in color gives an ethereal feeling, not quite a reflection, but perhaps a fleeting glimpse of a kind of philosophy. The chair seems like it could fall down if there is the slightest touch, life is the same…… slandering. The book is upside down or the the space is upside down. There is only one chair in the big painting, like the eyes are closed slightly. Nothing to care for more than ourselves.