Following Lee Bae's sooty "contemporary grotto" in 2015, Shouchiku Tanabe's monumental bamboo arbor in 2016, Min Jung-Yeon's enchanting birch forest in 2019, and Daniel Arsham's Zen garden last year, Duy Anh Nhan Duc has unveiled a celestial landscape of dandelion seeds, brimming with poetry and lightness, beneath the dome of the Guimet Museum. An immersive landscape to be experienced like an initiatory journey.
“My work draws its essence from the poetry of the plant world. Each of my creations stems from the pleasure I find in spending time in nature: in the forest, in meadows, in a wasteland, or even in the city, in the middle of a roundabout. Wonder is offered to all who seek it. I like to let myself be guided by the play of encounter. This might be before the graceful arrangement of a flower's petals, before the power of a seed, or at the sight of the architecture of a root system. The fruits of tireless gathering, the creations I imagine highlight plants known to all, but which we no longer truly see. Clover, salsify, lichen, wheat, maple – not forgetting the dandelion – form my palette. I discover, I observe, I glean, and, little by little, my project takes shape.”
The result of tireless harvesting and long, meticulous sessions of sorting, drying, gluing, and assembling, the plant installations of the artist Franco-Vietnamese (born in 1983 in Ho Chi Minh City and arrived in France at the age of ten) are the result of a slow observation of nature and its humblest plants flowering freely on roundabouts, wastelands or the edges of the ring road… Salsify, thistles, dandelions, wild carrots, poppies… lovingly picked, dried then scattered or sealed in flowerbeds and paintings or ephemeral sculptures.
A Wall metaphysics consisting of a double grid of fine metal chains holding dandelion seed heads in their nets, tracing the circle of rebirth to Sky roots sprouted in a gourd recycled into a sacred or cosmic vase, passing through The Wishing RoomIt is a true initiatory journey that Duy Anh Nhan Duc invites us to travel through in an ultra-condensed space-time that expands according to daydreams and meditations.
Facing the wall From denial, it invites us to become aware of the urgency of "rethinking our way of living in a world that is collapsing and devitalizing": a false wall woven from a multitude of tiny links evoking, like a "veil of alienation", our imprisonment in blindness, we see, through a subtle play of optics, transforming into a window... Wall of illusions embedding in its metal mesh dandelion seeds drawing in a perfect circle the promise of renewal: promises of life replacing chains, these seeds offer a beautiful escape towards a more "eco-responsible" future.
Composed of a striking assemblage of discarded windows, The Wishing Room It also invites us, through wonder, to introspection and action, to resurrect the innocence of the child who, blowing on dandelion flowers while making a wish, opened themselves "to hope and enchantment." By turning the crank of this makeshift greenhouse, part cabin, part carousel, one sets clouds of dandelion seeds twirling, fluttering under the action of a propeller that evokes the poetic and fruitful dance of samaras, those propeller-like fruits of the maple tree that fascinated and amused generations of children, back when nature was still a playground… Associating seeds with creative forces, as well as the millions of wishes and promises destined to be stirred within its ParlorDuy Anh Nhan Duca wanted to give a horizon back to windows that no longer had one, and he designed his cabin as an ode to rebirth and fertility, a true dream factory intended to revive the magical thoughts of childhood and, with them, responsible commitments.
A visual artist of plants, a poet of the ephemeral, but also a committed artist, he shows us, beyond beauty, fragility, opening up a world of possibilities…
“Carte blanche to Duy Anh Nhan Duc”
National Museum of Asian Arts – Guimet
6, Place d'Iéna, 75116 Paris
Until February 7, 2022
www.guimet.fr
By Stéphanie Dulout
