Anne-Laure Buffard Inc.
Nhu Xuan Hua , France
Tropism
Gladiolias and Fourtee yers in Between - Archive from the year '72 - Courtesy of the artist and of Anne-Laure Buffard Inc.
Anne-Laure Buffard Inc. is pleased to present in the space of 17 rue Chapon the first exhibition in Paris dedicated to the series of “Tropisms” by the French artist of Vietnamese origin Nhu Xuan Hua (born in 1989) following her acclaimed Solo Shows at Huis Marseille in Amsterdam and at the FFF in Frankfurt.
Entitled “Tropism: consequences of a displaced memory”, the exhibition explores through a set of digitally manipulated family archive images, the different strata of memory through a physical and emotional displacement – or “indefinable movements that slide rapidly to the limits of consciousness” to quote Nathalie Sarraute, from whom Nhu Xhuan Hua borrows the title of this intimate body of work with universal resonance.
“In 2016, having very little knowledge about the history of Vietnam, I undertook a personal investigation to connect my family history to the history of my country of origin with the aim of understanding this inexplicable need I felt to want to correspond with the past,” explains the artist. “Working with archival photographs of my family, I explored the process of Tropisms through my visual experience, in the presence of these photographs whose memories and experiences were not my own. Nevertheless, certain images provoked a vivid and inexplicable emotional reaction that I tried to translate through these digital manipulations, dematerializing the memory to keep only a visual form, sometimes abstract, of a sensation floating in the image.
Portraits of families with spectral silhouettes, dreamed landscapes of lost time, subliminal images of a vanished childhood … Through a set of photographs with evocative titles, (“the forgotten”, “Gladiolas and fortee years in between” … ), emerges, from weddings to birthday parties breaking in from the past, an aesthetic of loss and repair whose sensitive strength and great pictoriality sublimate the gaps of a distorted family memory as individual as collective.
With this exhibition, Nhu Xuan Hua, who has already made a name for herself as a fashion photographer for magazines such as Vogue, Time Magazine, Dazed Beauty, asserts herself as one of the indisputable new talents of contemporary photography.
The eponymous book published by Area Books will be available during the exhibition.
Exhibition from May 24 to June 07, 2023.
Rendez-Vous
Friday 26 May 2023 from 5:30 pm to 9:00 pm
Opening of the exhibition Tropism
Saturday 27 May 2023 from 4:30 pm to 7:30 pm
Signing of the book “Tropism, Consequences of a Displaced Memory”
75002 Paris, France 17 Rue Chapon
75003 Paris, France 0670316001 annelaurebuffard.com
The gallery
Located in an apartment on rue de la Bourse, in the axis between the Pinault Collection and Drouot, Anne-Laure Buffard Inc. belongs to the new generation of galleries investing new spaces in order to privilege close relationships with its artists, collectors and actors of the cultural scene. In a forward-looking dynamic, it intends to offer a tailor-made and committed accompaniment to a limited group of artists. The gallery carries out numerous off-site projects, favors Solo and Duo Shows at fairs, and publishes a booklet with a critical text for each project.
Gallery artists
Park Chae Biole ; Park Chae Dalle ; Pierre-Elie de Pibrac ; Elie Bouisson ; Antoine Ronin ; Robert Schad