Curatorial essay from Bill Nguyen
Featuring artists Oanh Phi Phi, Nguyen Thuy Hang, Linh San and Lena Bui, In absence, presence is a group exhibition that explores the affective qualities and sensorial sensitivities of artistic materials, and how processes of material transformation may, in turn, affect the way artworks are perceived and experienced. Through innovative acts of material manipulation and technical experimentation, the participating artists engage their chosen mediums and subjects in a committed process of mutation, expansion and cultivation, seeing matters and ideas as living entities with whom they converse and collaborate in an act of co-creation.
Moving back and forth between what-is-no-longer and what-is-yet-to-come, between the visible and that which escapes first glances, the artworks in this exhibition deviate from the situated norm and escape immediate contextualization by way of material intervention, visual illusion and sensorial enhancement. Paintings are thickened and dissected, translucently hanging mid-air and inviting human touch. Sculptures sweat, break and wither, consumed by the elements and, at times, by violent forces. Words are written then erased, burnt then crystalized, immortalized into whispers and melodies that traverse through spaces. No longer representational, these artworks live. No longer static, these artworks breathe. No longer silent, these artwork gesture. In their quiet solitude, they patiently wait – ever seeking, ever waiting – for the eyes that understand.
Because the eyes behold what the skin brushes,
the skin unveils what the ears await,
the ears discern what the tongue touches,
the tongue caresses what the nose attends,
and the nose breathes in what the eyes witness,
the viewer is invited to step beyond the confines of logic and into the depths of their senses, to embrace the artworks with all the rawness that nature bestows. No longer mechanical, their body is now a conduit for the flow of emotions to take them back to a place of primal instincts and recollections. Rather than dismissing the importance of the intellectual pathways that knowledge and learning offer, this exhibition prompts pondering: What revelations await when we choose – even if only for a moment – to set aside the constraints of context and reason, and allow ourselves to encounter art – first and foremost – through the prism of our physical body, sensitive emotions, lived memories and unconditional imagination?
