IN THE FOREST
Curator: Nguyen Anh Tuan
Artist: Le Brothers
Duration: August 27, 2023 to October 29, 2023
“How old are you, tree?” - Le Brothers.
During the long years of one’s existence, one’s thoughts travels from their inner world to the outer world, and in reverse, one looks for anchoring reflections from the outer world to furnish their inner world.
In the FOREST, their most recent project, is an exception to their previous practices. While it is a conversation between the duo and the external world, unlike their previous works, it looks at the entities existing in the external world as subjects existing alongside the artists, not just a pretext to reflect a mind-body-spirit’s narrative.
“How old are you, tree?”
This question emerged from the mind of the two artists and frequently made its reappearances during numerous long trips, first to the forests in the Northern part of the Trường Sơn Mountain Range in the West of Thừa Thiên Huế Province, and subsequently to the more distant forests of other countries and continents. Stepping into an old forest, sitting under the canopy of ageless ancient trees, the shape of nature starts to spring forth internally, engraving its images into one’s headspace. Nature has always been there, but only then was it discovered. It’s a nature of both external and internal existences, which largely goes unrecognized, for an average person is often overwhelmed by the great vastness and richness of a natural landscape. This sentiment has been perfectly articulated by Martin Heidegger: “..."Nature" is not to be understood as that which is just present-at-hand, nor as the power of Nature. The wood is a forest of timber, the mountain a quarry of rock; the river is water-power, the wind is wind 'in the sails'. As the 'environment' is discovered, the 'Nature' thus discovered is encountered too. If its kind of Being as ready-to-hand is disregarded, this 'Nature' itself can be discovered and defined simply in its pure presence-at-hand...”