Interface
by XEM collective ( Quang Lam, Hoang Duong Cam, Phan Quang, Nguyen Thanh Truc, UuDam Tran Nguyen )
Opening: Thursday, 20 Feb 2020, 6:00-8:00pm
Exhibition: 20 Feb - 10 Apr 2020
Interface presents new works by Vietnamese art collective XEM for the first time in Phnom Penh. The collective was formed by five friends and artists in 2013 through a shared passion for photography. While each member works independently on their respective practices, the group regularly produces a self-funded publication, also titled XEM, an experimental platform for practicing and sharing photography and related forms of artworks.
XEM means “to see, to look, to observe,” foregrounding the act of looking as a critical entrance into and with the world. According to the artists, “the book is a simple object with a high symbolic value.” Believing in chance and ritual, XEM takes on a slow approach of encounter, one that leaves behind a humble trace of tangible legacy amid the hyper-digital visual era. Readers come to learn about artworks and artists through the magazine distributed at cafés and libraries. People circulate and pass on the publication from person to person.
In each edition of the journal, the collective invites a guest artist to present work alongside their works. Launched here in this exhibition, this special edition of XEM features the five collective members with five Cambodian artists: Khiev Kanel, Khun Vannak, Lim Sokchanlina, Mech Sereyrath, and Sao Sreymao.
As a platform for creative expression without external editorial shaping or intervention, XEM is an example of the relevance and the need for artist’s publications, especially in the context of Southeast Asia where avenues and audiences for contemporary art are still small. Ultimately, it is the friendship among the collective members and their openness in welcoming and connecting with others that allow XEM to perform beyond just a magazine: an open creative community of visual experiment.
In the exhibition, physical works by the five XEM collective members take forms extending from their presentation in the magazine. In “Crash Simulacra from Saigon to Phnom Penh” by Quang Lam, the artist presents a series of anaglyph images, a stereoscopic photograph technique that duplicates one image into two superimposed ones. This offset images seen in bright red and cyan produces an illusion of movement and instability, heightening the impression of the airplanes crashing into the buildings. Next to them is a video game of a flight simulation over the city map of Phnom Penh that the artist programmed. The mission of the game is to crash into towering buildings that are continuously sprouting and turning them into green spaces. Lam’s work questions our perception and relationship with the world, reality, and technology though photography and image-making.
UuDam Tran Nguyen presents a recent video from his multi-phased project “Time Boomerang.” Inspired by the territorial dispute in the South China Sea, the artist has embarked on a long-term project exploring the lasting effect of colonialism and to “create a new world order.” Using hand as a measuring tool, a common practice in Asia, but also as a symbolic act of power to claim space, the artist proclaims a new world by extending his casted five bronze fingertips across five continents. In this video, the artist travels by a freighter from Asia crossing the Pacific Ocean to the America. Before dropping his third fingertip into the Ocean of California, the artist announces the 17th September 2019 a new Independence Day for America as a new country. Gestural, radical, and artistic, UuDam proposes a reconsideration of territorial imperialism through a personal undoing of history.
Public programs:
Exhibition catalogue:
Artist’s Talk by XEM Collective by Quang Lam, Nguyen Thanh Truc & UuDam Tran Nguyen
21 Feb 2020, 6:00-7:30pm
In English with Khmer translation
Screening: “Moro-Moro” (2019) and “Cooking in Pressure” (2016) by Bakudapan Food Study Group with presence of Eliesta Handitya
13 Mar 2020, 6:00-7:30pm
Ternate & Javanese with English subtitle
The topic of territorial questioning is also raised in Phan Quang’s work. In this case, the sovereignty over the South China Sea disputed by many states in the region is brought to the fore and challenged. His photographs present vast views of the ocean in Buoy Zero, an area in the south of Vietnam’s Vung Tau province. The artist actually jumped and swam in the area of the Vietnamese maritime boundary in order to “directly feel” the border. What we see is a fluid ocean surface, and according to the artist, “The seawater on this side is navy green, and that on the other side is also navy green. There is no border at all.” In addition, the artist also collected the seawater from the area. Presented here, the politically charged body of water is reduced to its very materialist, universal value.
Hoang Duong Cam presents two strips of images from photographs he took and those he found and collected from the media. Some photos were taken during the artist’s bus trip to the Vietnamese border. In many images, he draws outlines and shapes interrupting and masking the presented, or revealing the unseen. Joined together in this format, these images construct into a kind of narrative, like a film strip or a moving image. Inspired by the aesthetics of street photography, popular media, and iconic images of human conflicts through history, the artist questions what divides and connects us.
Nguyen Thanh Truc also asks a similar question but instead on the subjectivity between human and its replica: mannequin. Mannequin is used to present clothing as realistic and appealing as possible to human consumers. The consumption is supported by the impression of the clothing on a human body, which is achieved through the aid of a dummy. However, in this work, the artist produces t-shirts with images of mannequins. Now, the models are no longer an aid but become celebrated stars themselves. In effect, the artist imagines a reversal role: it is humans who are the ones that wear, promote, and celebrate the mannequin. Who really is mannequin?
All works presented here by XEM collective deal with what separates us but also what bonds and unites us. The very same things can produce multiple complex effects. Whether the interaction between humans and technology, the tension of political borders between sovereign states, conflicts among humans, the slippage of perception of reality, they are an in-between space, an interface that produces us and is produced by us.
About the artists:
Quang Lam (b.1968, HCMC) left Vietnam in 1975 and spent most his youth and career in France. He finished his Master degree in Computer Sciences at Pierre et Marie-Curie (Paris, France) in 1991 and Multimedia degree at Supérieur des Arts (Paris, France) in 2000. He is a multimedia director in various digital agencies. Photography is a flexible medium, that utilizes mechanical, chemical and electronic mechanisms, which
allow a better understanding, visually and conceptually, of the complexity of time. His works focus on the documentation of contemporary life in South-East Asia and broader Asia, using photography as a medium
to describe reality and its influence on our psyche. In 2012, he co-founded XEM collective, a publication of experimental visual art. Together with XEM collective, since 2013, he has realized many exhibitions, presented at The Factory (Vietnam), Wedeman Gallery Newton (USA) and San Art (Vietnam). Towards the development of a contemporary photography community in HCMC, Quang Lam founded Inlen Photo Gallery in 2016 to support young photographers, displaying their works and publishing photo books. He was Co-Curator for the exhibition “Machine Is Nature” at the Factory Art Centre, in Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam) in 2019.
Hoang Duong Cam (born 1974 in Hanoi) graduated Hanoi Fine Arts Institute in 1996. He is one of the Vietnamese contemporary artists, recognized both internationally and regionally, in the South East Asia. The first group show at L’Atelier Gallery in Hanoi in 1998 marked as the starting point of his artist career. His works were exhibited widely in and outside of the country ever since. It often proposes the deep concerns in both internal and external relations between the worlds, creating by things, peoples, ideas or contexts, spaces and time. In his artworks, the concept is conveyed through the media being used, nevertheless it was painting, sculpture, installation, performance, video art or digital photography. Cam’s artworks are always being seen relatively within the social, cultural contexts, together with many layers of Vietnam history and history of his own weaving with personal emotions, experiences and fantasies. During the past 20 years, Hoang Duong Cam
had more than 15 solo exhibitions in Vietnam, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong and France. He participated in many art projects as well as group exhibitions around the world, notably the exhibitions: “SUNSHOWER: Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia 1980s to Now” at Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan in 2017; “Connect: Art Scene Vietnam” at ifa-Galerie in Berlin and Stuttgart, Germany in 2009-2010; “Migration Addicts” at Venice, Italy which was officially collateral event of the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007; “Thermocline of Art. New Asian Waves” at ZKM Contemporary Art Museum in Karlsruhe, Germany in 2007.
Phan Quang (b. 1976, Binh Dinh) currently lives and works in Ho Chi Minh City. He studied Economics, graduating from University of Economics HCMC in 1999; subsequently working for various well-known photographers before starting his own commercial photographic studio ‘Stop & Go’ in 2004. Drawn to the power of photography as a medium that can both disturb and reflect ideas of truth, Phan Quang’s artistic practice today also encompasses sculpture, installation and video, often produced in close collaboration with local artisans and farmers in Bao Loc. His work was given solo feature - ‘A Farmer’s Diary’ at Galerie Quynh in Ho Chi Minh City in 2010, in addition to inclusion in recent group exhibitions hosted by the Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco, USA and the Ho Chi Minh City Fine Arts Museum, Vietnam in 2012; the Institute Francais of Cambodia and Kumho Museum of Art, South Korea in 2011. His works have been presented at solo showcases, such as ‘Adaptations’ at Koganecho Bazaar, Yokohama, Japan (2013), ‘Space/Limit’ by San Art, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (2013) and RE/COVER, curated by Nguyen Nhu Huy, BLANC Art Space, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (2016). He has been participated into important international exhibitions and events at ASEAN-Korea Contemporary Media Art Exhibition, The 5th Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale, Fukuoka, Japan (2014), Triennale Photo Bangkok BACC (2015), Festival photographer in Beijing (2016). Phan Quang is artist in residency program in Koganecho Art Center (Japan, 2013), and Asian Cultural Council, (2014-2015, New York, USA).
Nguyen Thanh Truc (b. 1969 HCMC) born and works in Ho Chi Minh city, graduated from Ho Chi Minh Fine Arts University. Since 1996, his works got selected for Phillip Morris Award exhibition. From then on, Truc has diligently and silently worked on mostly abstract paintings. His interest in photography also creates a balanced experimentation of forms and mediums. His works always evokes a sense of time, history and fragments. This is something very difficult to grasp, intangible yet very easy to relate to when looking at his works.
Truc have participated in numerous exhibitions include Art Expo Malaysia Plus, Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia; Xem Publication Projects, The Factory Art Center, HCMC, Vietname; Freedom is the Motorbike, LBCC Art gallery, Long Beach, CA, USA; Vietnam voices, Tobin Ohashi gallery, Tokyo, Japan; Caution! Development in Progress, Galerie Quynh, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; Asia, Now, Gyeonggi Arts Center, Suwon City, Korea; Summer Workshop Exhibition, Toulouse, France; 12+1, Blue Space Gallery, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; Point of View, Fine Arts Association, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; Art Exhibition for World Peace, Gana Gallery, Seoul, Korea. In 2013 he held a residency at Kamikaze one-night show PST, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
Uudam Tran Nguyen, A rare pioneer of Vietnamese-American Contemporary Art, UuDam’s risk-taking and brilliant art practice is very unique in contemporary art scene today. He is taking many art forms to a new level by pushing the boundaries of all the medium he touches upon. UuDam created huge-scaled art installations using hundreds of motorcycles’ exhaust to pump towering 4 storied tall inflatable sculptures. He also created the world’s first crowd-sourcing L2D app art (License 2 Draw) that enables people to
draw on surfaces located ten thousand of kilometers away from them with their smartphones. In his epic on-going TIME BOOMERANG project, UuDam creates a new form of global travel-sculpture-performances art. This ambitious 8-phased project expands on South East Asia current geopolitical situation millions
of years into the past and future. Last August, UuDam completed a 15 days voyage crossing the Pacific Ocean on a freighter from Asia to America. On 17th of Sept, upon the witness of friends and curators on board the Catamaran, he launched the 3rd bronze fingertips into California Pacific Ocean, completed
the Third part of PHASE #2, symbolically ‘’conquered ‘’ America. With Australia and Europe already “conquered”, his next stop is Africa and then Antarctica. UuDam exhibited and lectured at many important art venues in the world including the Yokohama Museum of Art, High Line Art, QAGOMA, Bildmuseet Museum, APT8, Kadist, Mori Art Museum, Kuandu Fine Art Museum, Esplanade Visual Arts, Shanghai Biennale 2018... His works has been mentioned and reviewed in top art magazines: Art Forum, Flash Art, Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, Blouin Art Info, New York Times, Straight Time top pick, Los Angeles Times, Phnom Penh Post, Art Radar Journal, LA weekly, Arttribune.com, Orange County Weekly, Art Monthly London, Cobo Social, Art Radar Journal, etc.
