Exhibitions

Hoang Duong Cam Solo Exhibition: ‘with a necessary dose of surrealism to go through the spaces between men’: Acts passing the boundary.

GALERIE QUYNH

Sep 07 - Oct 13, 2018

From 7^th September to 13^th October 2018, a solo Exhibition by Hoang Duong Cam, 'with a necessary dose of surrealism to go through the spaces between men' was held at GALERIE QUYNH, Ho Chi Minh City. At the exhibition, which was his sixth solo exhibition, his new sculptures and ambitious paintings were exhibited.

A Scene From the Exhibition Hall

On entering the gallery, we first saw the big piece on the right. Many of his oil paintings with vivid colors were displayed in three spaces; on the first, mid second, and second floors, and the sculptures were also arranged using sufficient space. The exhibition room facing the street allowed you to appreciate his work while feeling light from the outside.

Acrobatic Task of Tight-roping Between Contradictions

Hoang Duong Cam's work is repeated in the opposite of concepts, for example, in the projection and plane surfaces, melancholic, yet vivid colors, magnificent and small narratives, external and internal worlds in a work. However, his work skillfully manages these conflicting areas by bringing a wide range of visual, historical, and surrealistic elements.

What influenced his creation was the nonsensical logic and play of Dada (Dadaïsme) and this has left many fragmentary traces in his work.

Passage of Super-realistic Space

From history, geography to dividing rationality from subconscious, Hoang Duong Cam digs into the multidimensional and constant changes of boundaries, and the qualities of conflict. Then he focusses on super-realistic spaces and the acts of passing through those spaces in pursuing such diverse interrelationships of borders.

Intermediary spaces, such as borders defined by insecurity bring about substantial experiences that cannot be expressed by the reasoning or rationality of words alone, and that can be expressed not by temporary feelings but by the feeling that curiosity and confusion remain. He combines these experiences with the concept of Zen as a meditative act of changing his views from rationality and recognizing the essence.

Then, insights are provided by abstract expressions, and the negative image of the border line is reorganized into an active silhouette, cut out, reversed, layered, and arranged in a reorganization.

Marcel Duchamp's 'Étant donnés'

'Étant donnés' by Marcel Duchamp, the central figure of Dada who influenced Hoang Duong Cam's work- 'Given: 1. The Waterfall,  2. The Illuminating Gas' (1946-1966)  can only be seen through two peep holes in the old wooden door to see the strange and erotic landscape unfolding there. Hoang Duong Cam invites you to accept his work universe from a diagonal angle like this work from Duchamp. The entrance to an intuitive and endless journey is always patiently open.

Main Works

Summary

'with a necessary dose of surrealism to go through the spaces between men' was a solo exhibition that was able to dig into the diversity of the boundaries of space and touch on a number of fragmentary stories expressed in Dada's spirit away from rationality.

Artist Profile

Hoang Duong Cam
Born in Hanoi, 1974 

Education:
Hanoi University of Fine Arts

Exhibition:
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; 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 (with 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 (with Mogas Station), Singapore Biennale 2006. In 2009 he held a residency at the acclaimed Tokyo Wonder Site, Japan.

One of Vietnam's most daring conceptual artists, Hoang Duong Cam (born 1974 in, Hanoi) completed his studies at the Hanoi University of Fine Arts in 1996. His oeuvre includes painting, photography, video installations, performance, and collaborative projects. Although seemingly disparate, his overall practice playfully examines ideology, cultural difference and the structures of the inner and outer world with humor and keen insight. Often investigating the boundaries between the visible and the invisible, the artist states that he is concerned with the contextualization of expression, interpretation association and the implicit relations between them.