Art and Darkness

His work is not something we can easily hear, see, or touch. It is invisible, it is a space completely invaded by darkness. Therefore, to perceive it, one must not only use the eyes, or even not use the eyes. It is outside the light, which usually guides our vision to perceive and the illusion that we can recognize reality.

In his small room, where Yen Nang - a Covid-19 F2 case - is self-isolating, he set up an empty box covered with black cloth to block out the light. What the box is, what material it is made of, is not important, because it is not Yen Nang's work, as he said. His work is the black mass floating in the room that is separated from the light outside through that cloth-covered box. Our job is to forget the box, forget the cloth. Yen Nang and I let ourselves be immersed in the darkness that exists inside it.

Darkness is inherently terrifying to people, because of its unpredictable secrets. We forget that darkness actually dominates the universe, where light is just a flickering flame, and that within each of us, there are areas of light that have never been set foot, and that this world is immersed in both light and darkness, and sometimes in the darkness that is so dense and so dense, we mistakenly believe that it is light. Because we do not know, because of our mistake, we use the name of false light to fight against the true light. We do it either out of ignorance or out of cruelty.

Artist Yen Nang is holding the exhibition "Anti light".

Facing the darkness is the best way to fight against the fear itself. That is the message that Yen Nang wants to send through this unique art exhibition. He held the exhibition during the days when all of humanity is struggling to fight against a dark shadow called Covid. Unlike previous exhibitions that often use light, adjust light, and take advantage of light to display works, this time, Yen Nang used darkness as the material and object of his art.

Artist Yen Nang confided that in painting, light - dark, dark - light is very important, it cannot be absent in any painting. Even the first extreme abstract painting, "Black Square" by Kazimir Malevich, only painted a square of pure black, that black is still placed on a white background - symbolizing light and dark. The artist intentionally did not put the painting in a frame, so that it would not appear limited. But to the human eye, the edge of the painting or the wall on which it is hung affects the perception of the painting. These effects are beyond the artist's intention. At the exhibition "The Last Futurist Exhibition: 0.10" (The Last Futurist Exhibition: 0.10), Petrograd, 1915, where the painting was officially launched, Malevich also intentionally hung the painting in a corner of the wall close to the ceiling. This is the position where Russian Orthodox people place religious symbols in their homes. With this action, he manipulated the viewer’s mind, implicitly “forcing” them to appreciate his work. It also meant that he practiced installation art, a genre that was only officially born much later. But at that location, close to three bright flat surfaces (left wall, right wall and ceiling), the light on these three surfaces was certainly not uniform, these three different tones would directly affect the painting. All those external influences made it difficult for the viewer to feel the spirit of that black painting as he desired: its cosmic nature.

Compared to sculpture, Yen Nang believes that in sculpture, the effect of light and dark is even more obvious and direct. In fact, sculpture is the art of building the ratio of light and dark on one or more materials. An excellent author of materials who loves darkness and black is artist Anish Kapoor. His sculpture “Dirty Corner” is like a cave, 8m high and 60m deep. Viewers will go into the work, feel the fading of light, until it disappears, leaving only darkness, and then gradually brightening when going out. This is still the experience of the ratio of light and dark on a work. In some other works, he uses nanotechnology with the highest blackness to paint the work, but the essence is still black when viewed from the light. But in “Anti light”, Yen Nang approaches art in a completely different way, completely removing light from the work.

Not in painting or sculpture, in the performance - interactive genre, artist Marina Abramovic also puts the audience in a situation of losing their vision, only darkness, by blindfolding the participants. At first glance, the work "Generator" is very similar to "Anti light", because the "viewers" also cannot see anything. But in fact, the two works are different in nature. First, Generator takes people and their psychology as the material and object of research, darkness is just a condition, a situation. Second, the participants will have a psychological loss of freedom: First, they know that they are the subject of the survey; second, their vision is inhibited by the blindfold; third, the participants know that, although they cannot see anything, they are walking in the light and are being followed, filmed, and photographed directly by many people. "Anti light" is different, Yen Nang takes darkness as the material and also the object of art. The viewer's eyes are free to open wide to look into the darkness. The viewer is the one who actively perceives the work, like going to see a painting, but in a more special way.

Another work, belonging to conceptual art, is the air sculpture of Salvatore Garau. In terms of material, if we consider these invisible works of Garau as positive, then Yen Nang's "Anti light" is negative. Both are empty space but one side is outside the light, the other side is in the dark. This type of air work of Garau will stop, it is very difficult to develop further. Because, everything in the light has been studied very carefully for thousands of years. Yen Nang's dark art is different, it opens up a new world.

Looking through a few works of different genres like that, we can see that art and art practice are becoming increasingly rich and diverse, almost limitless. Yen Nang is one of the few artists who have such open and innovative art practices in Vietnam. From the artistic activities in “Phong sinh” or “Thong den”, to “Anti light”, no matter what the art project is, what Yen Nang always aims for is to urge the community to live in harmony with nature, to make amends with nature, to thereby evoke rays of conscience in each soul, rays of light that sometimes we can only recognize and find in the dark.