HCMC – Solo Exhibition by Sandrine Llouquet

Opening: Thu 27 Jun, 6 pm
Exhibition: 28 Jun – 31 Jul 2013
Galerie Quynh

From the organizer:

We are pleased to present Chapter I: Where I attempt to drown the dragon – Sandrine Llouquet’s fourth solo exhibition at the gallery. Alchemy, transformation, discovery and rebirth are recurrent themes in the show represented through highly symbolic images and metaphors. The ambitious exhibition is divided into two parts: nigredo (blackness) andalbedo (whiteness) in reference to the first two of the four major stages of the Magnum Opus in alchemy.

With a nod to Victorian novels, the whimsical exhibition title suggests the beginning of an elaborate journey full of fantasy and drama for our protagonist. References to Jung, archetypes and the collective unconscious abound in the show. The dragon itself refers to personal obstacles and symbolizes the shadow, an archetype that represents the darker side of the human psyche. Llouquet states, “Each of my artworks is a step left behind that shows a building of oneself: wandering, passage from one stage to another, rebellion, escape, rebirth… By pursuing my research on this idea of building oneself, I naturally came to study the history of alchemy and found deep similarities with my conception of art: a quest for wisdom that goes with material experimentations.”

Born in 1975 in Montpellier, France, Sandrine Llouquet has lived in Vietnam since 2005. She graduated from École Pilote Internationale d’Art et de Recherche – Villa Arson in 1999. A dynamic contributor to the development of contemporary art in Vietnam, she was a founding member of Wonderful District, a project that promotes contemporary art through exhibitions, concerts and theater pieces, as well as a member of Mogas Station, a Vietnam-based artist collective. Llouquet’s work has been exhibited in numerous venues including the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, California and Tate Modern, London. She has also participated in a number of biennales with Mogas Station such as the Shenzhen Biennale (2007), the Singapore Biennale (2006) and in Migration Addicts – a collateral event of the 52nd Venice Biennale. Her drawings, objects and videos are in private collections around the world.