“entrances'” by Cian Duggan opened as MoT+++ third +1 museum by any other name on Friday November 23, 2018. as pair of works on a busy highway in Saigon one ‘entrance’ had already collapsed by the time of the opening. the second ‘entrance’ closed unfortunately the next day.
part 2 “exit” will appear at an unforseen time in the future. sent floating into the sea at Hue, anyone that ‘entered’ via any one of Duggan’s works could eventually ‘exit’ in an unknown place and at an unknown time.
Duggan’s abstract forms appear otherworldly, they hover with a static tension that animates them, as extra-terrestrial life forms, or portals to another dimension. yet they coexist with their surroundings, rather than overtake it. somewhere between memory and imagination, primitive and futuristic, organic and digital.. the evocation of the familiar rendered unfamiliar lending the forms their oddness.
part 1 of Duggan’s +1 museum by any other name materialises as multiple “entrances”; gateways suggesting disruptive possibilities to the linearity of time and space. their incongruity makes them strangely recognisable as they allude to the many other similar “entrances” hidden in plain sight amongst Saigon’s streets. although there is the possibility that old entrances may close, consumed by the rapidly developing urban environment, Duggan’s compulsion to paint means that new entrances are continually, if only briefly, emerging, waiting to be found.
the “entrances” diptych is part 1 of Duggan’s work for MoT+++’s +1 museum by any other name. part 2 “exit” is a singular piece planned for an unforeseen time in the future—a yet to be realised second half of the work that will join other floating artworks in the sea off the coast of Hue, in a venture organised by fellow +1 museum artist Dao Tung. one year after its construction, part 2 will be untethered and released into the ocean creating an unknowable “exit”, drifting in both time and space.
Maria Sowter
