» dissolve into light

Bao Chau’s collection of paintings, first shown as part of her solo exhibition projecting a thought, signals a transformation in her methodology that shifts away from the piercing eye of analysis. She allows herself to look, unfocused and un-oriented, at the “hyperbolic” visual space of embodied vision. In contrast with space as defined by Euclidean geometry and three-dimensional, linear perspective, hyperbolic visual space is curved – distorted according to the spatial relationship between the viewer and object. In hyperbolic visual space, depth dilates, parallel lines diverge, frontal surfaces bulge convexly, and space appears flatter as if seen through a telephoto lens. Decay and new growth commingle in Bao Chau’s interconnected fragments of an inner landscape, where flames gather to form the buds of white flowers (rain that falls inward) and flyaway ash transmute midair into petals, raindrops or eyes (dissolve into light). For Bao Chau, embodied vision concedes the dominance of the eye – an eye that separates the self and the world. Instead, she anchors seeing and ultimately meaning making in the body and its senses. 

(Edited from the projecting a thought exhibition essay by Thái Hà)