frozen data | Lananh Le

MoT+++ is pleased to present frozen data by Lananh Le, a series of digital paintings developed over the last year.

exploring the inexplicable mystery of supernatural forces and unconscious worlds, the artist paints her experience of encountering fantastical hybrid animals and unceasingly gazing at magnificent details of nature. mythical undertones and a playful sense of wonder pervade her intricate collages of original painting, references from art history, photography and digital dyes. each frame is a portal into the whimsical world of the artist’s imagination, intermingled with flashes of personal memories and lyrical narratives, freed of logic and reason. as one enters, they immerse into mystifying scenes stretched by an uncanny abstract notion of time, of earth, heaven and hell, gods and goddesses, organisms, animals, and plants.. everything becomes ‘frozen data’, time and matters that keep melting into each other — a vortex that mirrors itself again and again, an endless cycle of dreaming, entering, exiting and re-entering the dream.

about the artist
Lananh Le (1993-2020, Vietnam) was a multidisciplinary artist whose practice focused on oral history, mythology and public cultures of memory. Her work illustrates a compulsion to create ‘mythical ecologies’, otherworldly realms where she could investigate the relationship between mythology, ecological formations, and how diverse cultures express their relationship with the universe. She graduated from Stanford University with a BA in Ethnicity Studies in 2015 before returning to Vietnam to be based in Ho Chi Minh City.

opening: Saturday January 11, 2020 @ 7pm
on view: January 11 – February 28, 2020

location: Saigon Domaine, Ground Floor, 1057 Binh Quoi, Ward 29, Binh Thanh District, Ho Chi Minh City

Lananh Le was born on June 17, 1993 and left us too early.

“In Frozen Data, digital paintings eventually evolved into multiple frames of seven animated videos that lasted for approximately twelve hours…

Drawing each colorful splinter and fragment was a meticulous, obsessive act of mark-making, depicting each abstract stream of thought in an enchanting yet tangled inner world, a vastness of ephemerality that’s ghostlike. . the magnifying glass forms ripples of light that drift through time, contained in one drop of a moment, or forever. a maze full of turns, intertwined, mysterious contradictions, where it is easy to get lost…

Visions are somewhat deceived by the medium. The magnifying glass slowly moving and zooming into the very tiny microscopic details of the different frames. The magnifying glass in the videos is like the sun and moon, moving across the sky, and eventually around the entire universe, so slowly you can hardly see it moving… Each microscopic detail of skies, leaves, patterns, plants in the supernatural macrocosm of the videos were spurred by the scientific theory that tiny particles, electrons and protons, make up matter in the physical universe.

Much of the visual content was flowing from my subconscious, reflecting an unruly process of personal mythmaking… fishbowl-like simulacrum of an inner world containing fragments of personal memory, hybrid animals, dream imagery, wondrous geometry reflecting a state of mind..”

“This is my new statement for works in frozen data..

Thinking maybe I should accept that this is a work in progress, stick with this honest and brief statement, and just start on new works that have more meaning in it.”

“In some ways this frozen data work is very westernized way of thinking influenced by surrealism… I’m thinking of making work with more structured content, rather than an unruly subconscious. I am reading “Thần, người và đất Việt” (Gods, People and the Vietnamese Land) by Tạ Chí Đại Trường, which talks about cultural changes hidden in the chaotic layers of indigenous myths and spiritual beliefs, specifically historical figures and their roles as spirits in the afterlife… And how in the minds of Vietnamese people, there is always a perception of the existence of the supernatural world.

I’ve been thinking about national identity and how I’ve been more connected to a very Eurocentric influenced than my own homeland and it’s frustrating me..”

“Thank you chị ơi! Can’t wait till this corona crisis is over and start to work with the collective. It’s a hard time when everyone is quarantining and there’s so much social distancing and isolation.. its hard when people can’t even get around to be united. recently I still try to get out and see my family from time to time because if I spend so much time alone I go crazy…”

…………/

A man lead us to the back of the temple, walked us up a few steps to an open room where all walls are covered with shelves piled up with thousands of urns with people id photos on. A woman from the temple showed us one of the two urns on a table in front of the altar, a small white ceramic lotus shape urn with a tiny id picture of you on it. The temple woman took the roses from us, placed them on top of your urn, and gave us some incense. We stood there, staring at the perception of your remains. Each of us started to process the unbelievable reality. You are gone.

Those have became your last messages to me. Everything was about making better works. It doesn’t matter how much we assured you that your works are great, you were never satisfied with yourself. Indeed, you were far from being satisfied but more obsessed with the possibility of being better, to the perfection that simply doesn’t exist in this world.

What have we all missed here?

Time

Our time with you was so little…

We all failed to make you stay longer with us. Nevertheless, while you start your new journey to explore the unknown, the parallel universe, hopefully as vibrant and magic as in your last works, with different dimensions of time which could unleash all our regrets, your Frozen Data will keep melting into this world, into our collective memory, will live on with us and continue to experience our notion of time on this beautiful planet.

– an obituary for Lananh Le (1993 – 2020) from MoT+++ team and collective –