"Confrontation with the two infinities [sky and sea] humbles us and brings us back to a dialogue with ourselves."
At the end of the 1970s, barely a year old, Bao Vuong, huddled in his parents' arms on a makeshift boat, made the long crossing, like thousands of other boat people fleeing the Vietnamese Communist regime following the invasion of South Vietnam by North Vietnam. From the traumatic memories (reported) of this crossing, of nights on the high seas, of hunger and thirst (which almost proved fatal to his family, saved, in extremis, by the rain), the artist has made the breeding ground for his cathartic work. Begun in 2017 (after the shadows of the past had resurfaced), his series The Crossing declines these black seas of memory in a series of monochromes made of impasto paint, to which graphite powder and incense ashes are now added.
In the 23rd work in the series, produced in 2020, the mass of paint masoned with a knife covered the entire surface of the canvas. In the 115th, produced this year, it now occupies just under half the canvas, leaving a sky of ashes to unfold on the horizon, and even a moon to spread its rays... If, in its blackest preparations, the sea was already criss-crossed with eddies ("sculpted" into the thickness of the paste to catch the light), here it appears all glittery, like a black diamond... More tactile, moving and vibrant than ever, in other recent works, it even appears as if transfigured by sparkling skies with glowing clouds. Do these shimmers and gaps of light in incense skies portend the hope of rebirth or renewal on the horizon?
Just as he drew a tenuous, barely perceptible golden line between the two panels of a diptych buried under a "mountain of darkness", Bao Vuong opens up "the narrow door" to heaven: " Much lighter because they are drawn with a mixture of graphite powder and burnt incense ash, these passing clouds can link us to heaven, to an afterlife", explains the artist, who has reconstructed the altars dedicated, in Vietnamese homes, to prayers for the deceased guided by incense smoke (a vehicle between the living and the dead).
"Showing the infinity of the sky" in the opacity of the night and, beyond the darkness, hope...
Bao Vuong: Horizons - A2Z Art Gallery
24, rue de l'Échaudé, Paris 6e
Until January 23
https://www.a2z-art.com/exhibitions/120-bao-vuong-horizons/cover
Stéphanie Dulout