HCMC – Exhibition “Ideal Fall”

Opening: Thu 06 Oct, 6 – 8 pm
Exhibition: 06 Oct – 19 Nov 2011
Galerie Quynh

From Galerie Quynh:

Galerie Quynh is pleased to present Ideal Fall – an exhibition of photography, painting and installation by Hoang Duong Cam. This much anticipated exhibition, developed over a period of four years, reflects the artist’s ongoing examination of idealism and its effects on reality in present-day Vietnam. Considering Plato’s Theory of Forms, Hoang investigates the roots of idealism and questions how our thoughts, chronic habits and (outmoded) customs are formed.

Though the artist’s trademark humor and irony is evident in Ideal Fall, the exhibition reveals a new maturity in Hoang’s practice. Hoang is now looking inward to create a highly personal series of works that illustrate contemporary Vietnamese society in all its complexity. Inspired by the life of his father, Hoang began to ponder the idealism of his father’s generation and how it mitigated the hardships of war. Beauty existed in romantic nostalgia and served as an alternative temporality; dreams of civilization and modernity brought freedom.

The Weirdness of an Ideal Mind series depicts distorted, imaginative scenes of the circus and magic shows, hinting at the oddities and chaos of reality. The paintings are a satire on the ideal world of those  who wish to escape from reality. Each painting is coupled with a wire paper sculpture that is covered in concrete. The absurd sculptures seem to anchor the idealistic scenes in reality, representing the heaviness of thought. An interesting addition to the painting sculpture duo, in the form of burned workers’ protective uniforms, is the reference to Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International, a utopian structure embracing modernity. Designed as the headquarters of the international communist organization
following the Russian Revolution in 1917, it was a spectacular vision that was never realized.

While delving into the sources of idealism, Hoang began recalling the myths and stories of U Minh Forest, a mangrove forest in the south of Vietnam notorious for its revolutionary past. Once occupied by criminals, renegades, Chinese refugees, pirates and soldiers, the forest is metaphor for the confused state of the ideal mind. U Minh literally translates as a dark place but the word usually refers to a state of mind, which could signifty anything that is not clearly understood. It could be a chaotic, unclear or confused state. The Lightning in U Minh Forest paintings are complex, fantastical stories that offer insight into the present state of Vietnam through examining its past.

Born in 1974, Hoang Duong Cam studied at the Hanoi Fine Art University. Hoang is one of Vietnam’s most important artists of the post-doi moi generation. He has participated in numerous exhibitions and biennales in Asia, North America and Europe. Recent exhibitions include Representation in the Meaning of a metaphor for a forest as endoscopy / links between locations, Project Space and Spare Room Gallery, School of Art, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia; 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, ifa Galerie Berlin and Stuttgart, Germany. Other
noteworthy exhibitions include 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. Hoang Duong Cam has been living and working in Ho Chi Minh City since 2001.