About
Selected Work
Held between names
Crossings
Others’ shores
Ecchymosis no data
Last day
no hope
9,8 km
Frome one essence to another
Muted
The Silent Sky
About
Selected Work
Held between names
Crossings
Others’ shores
Ecchymosis no data
Last day
no hope
9,8 km
Frome one essence to another
Muted
The Silent Sky
DNSAP Diploma, Beaux-Arts de Paris 2021
curated by Cléophée Moser
Collection of the OEC Paris
Western museum institutions have often transformed cult objects into works of art, and this gesture is rooted in colonial history. In France, Buddhas have become figures of decorative exoticism. With From One Essence to Another, Lê Hoàng Nguyên interrogates these displacements. He collects Buddhas imported from Asia and sold as decorative objects, meets with the sellers-importers, then follows a precise protocol: burning the figure, a gesture at once critical and purifying, which transforms the object into a work.
The installation replays the codes of museum display. Metal legs salvaged from furniture support the sculptures, presented at varying heights. This minimal apparatus evokes colonial-era displays, where artifacts were accumulated like trophies. Without freezing that violence in place, the artist questions the way objects are looked at, displaced, and instrumentalized.
Caught between formal starkness and historical weight, the work unsettles the viewer's position. By working with the afterlife of objects, Lê Hoàng Nguyên develops an ecology of sculpture attentive to material narratives and memory, turning the exhibition into a critical, reparative space.
Text written by Henri Guette