10 Chancery Lane Gallery announce their joint presentation of The Deep Blue Sea by Dinh Q. Lê at Art Basel Hong Kong 2017 from March 23-25, selected as part of the Encounters section curated by Alexie Glass-Kantor.
In the installation, The Deep Blue Sea, by acclaimed Vietnamese artist Dinh Q. Lê (b.1968), photography is not merely an image but it is rife with sculptural and conceptual potential. Known for his large-scale photographic weavings and video, Lê has developed an artistic practice that insists on a deeper engagement with the way global crisis is perceived. To create the cascading scroll installation, Lê has appropriated four images from the ongoing boat refugee crises in the Mediterranean Sea. By stretching a single image across 150’ expanse of photo paper, Lê’s photographic installation uses arresting scale to scrutinize the significance of still frames in our collective culture. Lê asks the viewers to experience the image as an abstract canvas, denying the viewers an obvious narrative. Instead they are encouraged to imagine narratives and what their memories recall. Overturning Cartier-Bresson’s notion of the “precise moment,” Lê argues for a fluid view of history that is permanently etched in our historical memory. It is important to note that in 1978 Lê and his family were refugees by boat escaping Vietnam.
About the artist
Dinh Q. Lê lives in Vietnam and holds an MFA in photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York. He participated in the 2013 Carnegie International at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, dOCUMENTA 13 in 2012; the 2009 Biennale Cuveê in Linz, Austria; the 2008 Singapore Biennale; and the 2006 Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, in Brisbane, Australia. His work has been exhibited at major institutions and international exhibitions including: Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York; Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Sydney, Australia; MoMA PS1, Long Island City, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; Tufts University Art Gallery, Medford, Massachusetts; and the Asia Society, New York, New York, among many others. He is the co-founder of Sàn Art in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, where he has been based for the past decade. In 2010 he was awarded the Prince Claus Award for his outstanding contribution to cultural exchange. A major survey exhibition, Dinh Q. Lê: Memory for Tomorrow, was presented at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo in 2015.
