Darkness fills the space and a flame fiercely burns on the large screen, while dim lights and floating fabric linger behind. Ngô Đình Bảo Châu transforms domestic and bodily forms into works that explore the interconnectedness between the human body and the surrounding environment within this evolving world — in between destruction and rebirth.
In this first-ever collaboration between Galerie Quynh and Gallery Medium, “projecting a thought” is a solo exhibition by Ngô Đình Bảo Châu and curated by Thái Hà, featuring a new body of work comprising video installation, sculptures, monumental fiber works and large-scale paintings. Taking place at TDX Ice Factory, the exhibition explores how the vastness of the world is reflected in the body, and how the body projects itself onto the world. The curatorial essay reads: “In an exhibition that wholly collapses the demarcations between the internal and external, the body emerges not as container but as assemblage, where ash, earth, and plant fibre co-constitute with human flesh a hybrid ecology, always in process, always in relation.”
Installation view of “projecting a thought” at TDX Ice Factory.
In ‘a burn’ (2024), a cardboard kitchen is set on fire. Spectators, whether through the camera lens or in person, can do nothing but witness its destruction. The flames slowly devour every block until the structure collapses into scattered embers under the pastel sky. The cardboard kitchen, originally created for Ngô Đình Bảo Châu’s solo exhibition “Towards Realist Socialization” at Galerie Quynh in 2020, was modeled after the Frankfurt Kitchen (1926) by Austrian architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky. Designed to reduce the burden of housework, it was celebrated as a symbol of progress. Yet beneath the guise of a “labor of love,” it reinforced women’s confinement to unpaid domestic labour and exploitation. The flames in the video may not express direct frustration towards the unfairness, but they carry a sense of liberation. Here, destruction feels necessary: what remains in the ruins gestures toward the possibility of renewal, even rebirth.
“a burn”, 2024. Video installation with sound. Duration: Until the last sunbeam retreats into silence.
Building on the exploration of destruction and renewal, ‘and the ashes become fireflies’ (2025) continues the dialogue between the debris and the world. The ruins of the burned kitchen are gathered and placed into motorized lightboxes set upon cracked soil. In this darkness, the ashes have not reached the end of their life but are given new vitality: fragments kept in constant motion by currents of air. Rather than remaining as ruins of the past, the artist revives them in the present — bright against the dark, still moving, still alive. They can always be reconstructed, remaining inseparable from the world.
‘and the ashes become fireflies,’ 2025. Ash collected from the burning of ‘Everything falls down, the flames go up – Twin Kitchens’ (cardboard box), glass, mica, LED light strip, PC cooling fan, foam beads, red clay, and electrical components. Dimensions variable.
If flames and ashes liberated bodies and all matters back into the earth with rebirth, then ‘organs of the infinite’ (2019) releases the body from its earlier tensions and allows it to reclaim itself. The work evokes a world of moss spread across fabric-skins, as though the cellular growth within our bodies — organs multiplying and clustering — has been projected onto vast textile surfaces. Made with trúc chỉ and materials such as paper pulp, silk, cornsilk, duckweed, and bamboo, the fabric-skins hang from the ceiling, floating and ascending freely. Light filters through their thin and vulnerable layers, transforming the fabric into skin and cells that are, according to the exhibition text, “no longer a protective barrier but a permeable, receptive one.”
‘organs of the infinite,’ in collaboration with Việt Nam Trúc Chỉ Art, 2019. Trucchigraphy on silk dimensions variable.
Moving from darkness into the light behind the curtains, a series of hyperbolic paintings gives viewers the sense of looking at the world through a telescope. Elements of the body and surrounding landscapes — both internal and external — gradually emerge as one moves through the space. Fragments merge: flames become buds of white flowers, ashes turn into petals or raindrops, the black sun absorbs everything, eyes and strands of DNA appear. Surreal imagery with distorted forms dominate the paintings and the viewer’s gaze, creating a dreamlike experience.
Time keeps passing, yet humans and our bodies remain, subject to decay and the possibility of rebirth. To experience the large-scale oil paintings, viewers can either walk around, slowly immersing themselves in the “universe” within the body and its perceptions, or remain at ‘eye of the moment’ (2025), a sculpture positioned at the center of the space surrounded by the paintings, to stay present and grounded.
(In the middle) ‘eye of the moment,’ 2025. HDF and polyurethane paint approx. Dimensions: 45 × Ø 600 cm.
There exists a powerful energy within the softness and fluidity of the works, yet, at the same time, it erupts fiercely like a flame, then calms into the dim glow of fireflies in the dark. The world is then magnified through cells on fabric-skin, then becomes surreal as the inner life existing within a human body merges with nature. From the decay and rebirth emerging in darkness, light gradually appears, and viewers find themselves in this vibrant “universe” interconnected within the body, the earth, and its elements. The body, as a living medium expressing its own perception, imagination and consciousness of what lies within and beyond, becomes a projection of the world — and the world, in turn, is a projection of the body itself.
Installation view of “projecting a thought” at TDX Ice Factory.
Photos courtesy of Galerie Quynh and Gallery Medium.
“Projecting a thought” by Ngô Đình Bảo Châu is now on view at TDX Ice Factory until September 10, 2025. More information on the exhibition and opening hours can be found on this Facebook page.
