People in the City

Opening: Fri 08 Jan 2010, 6 pm
Exhibition: 08 – 18 Jan, 2010
Goethe

An exhibition of sculpture, painting and installation by Pham Ngoc Duong, using a variety of materials from modern life in Vietnam in order to portray an honest and objective look at the social life in which he lives.

For me, the images of modern life are the images of different generations being born and growing up in difficult situations, and trapped under many pressures. These pressure come from the undeveloped social environment, the inequality and lack of human rights, the lack of knowledge and culture, and the remains from the wars… They are invisible, but the violence they bring along still lingers around here and shows through a lot of peoples’ faces. To fully describe each individual’s face is an impossible thing to do. Therefore I have used my imagination to create people in a state of being under pressure.

There is a Vietnamese saying that goes “Ở bầu thì tròn, ở ống thì dài”, which translates “Living in a round shape it will be round, living in a tube it will be tube-shaped”. This saying shows how the living environment directly effects the species that live in it; and how these species change themselves in order to fit in with the expected, the norms. With this exhibition, I hope to show people part of the brutality and cruelness of our surrounding environment, so that we are more aware of ourselves and make the right choices in building a better life.

Pham Ngoc Duong