The photographic method is – strictly speaking – not dependent on a photographer. However carefully the photographer controls the process, it remains an optical-chemical or electronic process that can just as well be controlled automatically. The direct link with reality suggests that the images themselves also take on the form of reality, although of course it is only an indirectly derived reflection of it. At most, a camera is the medium that can appropriate this apparent reality and make it imaginable. The infinite possibilities of selectively capturing a solidified moment from the time-space continuum in the existentialist sense of the passage of time and impermanence are the astonishingly powerful qualities of this beautiful medium.
At the same time as capturing precious moments, each photo added to our parallel image world essentially adds something to our expanding world view and insatiable information system. As a result, all images become connoted from a conscious and unconscious system of meaning.
The work Obscure invites us to break free from – as far as possible – a conditioned view and to reconsider everything obvious in a 'meaning-free' way. To this end, Hoàng makes the (looking) 'subject' coincide with the (watched) 'object', radically inverting this dualistic system of values.
For this, Hoàng had glass blown from sand from Huế (Vietnam) into a circle and blown glass from soil from IJsselstein (Netherlands) into a square. Both glasses are photosensitive and exposed to light without fixing; without Hoàng having to intervene, they develop themselves automatically.
For example, photography not only offers contact with a past, but at the same time forces you to look at the present in an alternative way. With this application in Obscure, the split of its origin and identity through the fusion of maker and carrier and of identity and process is depicted in a metaphorical way.
– Frank van der Stok, art historian –
Thanks in part to support from the Mondriaan Fund