“The Beauty of Withered Flowers and Contemplation on the Moments of Human Life in the Project Reply” Chiron Duong, 2021
One day when I walked past a flower shop, the brilliant and abundant beauty of the flowers on the shelves captivated my attention. When I touched them, I realized they were fake flowers mixed with real flowers. Just like the surprise mixed with skepticism in me, it led me to think: When we live in an era where fake flowers can be made surprisingly realistic, what helps me identify which flowers are real and which are fake flowers? Is it true that bright, fresh, and energetic flowers are objects people want to fake instead of withered flowers?
Is there any connection between youth, middle age, and old age that revolves around these relationships between real and fake?… All these questions that do not have exact answers also make me think about life: what is the most true beauty of life and the hardest to fake? And what is the relationship of all these stages in human life? I can partly experience it through this project: The reply- “True Void Is Wonderful Existence” 2021
The reply- “True Void Is Wonderful Existence”:
“When I returned to the City after the Vietnamese Tet holiday, I noticed the Tet flower pots in the house were fading. They were present in front of me and made me feel a sense of waste if I ignored this event. So I take a photo shoot. This unintentionally makes sense when you save an investment in props – something I always need to lift in every photoshooting session. I photographed from chrysanthemums to dried chili plants, azaleas, cornflowers, and rice flakes. Each type of tree with some basic effect that I often use in my works.
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I relax my mind and open the door to welcome guests entering the studio. And of course, in this conversation, I am the one who asks and listens.
“I asked who you are, where are you from, what’s wrong, memories? The dying flowers, with some comical intangibility, I felt an answer — a response.”
At the end of each conversation, I was surprised and touched by the review of the images and messages from them. It could be a tough battle that the chili plant went through to face death, Or the fictitious spiritual story of the corn plant as it passed through different reincarnations, …”
