Binh Danh created his "Ghost of Tuol Sleng" daguerreotype from archives the Khmer Rouge kept of its victims. (binh danh / haines gallery, s.f.)Friday, January 16, 2009
Kenneth Baker
Excerpt from the San Francisco Chronicle (California, USA)
Binh Danh's exhibition in the small room at Haines Gallery appears to present three walls lined with framed silver mirrors. But draw close to any piece and it reveals itself as only a daguerreotype can, its inherently negative image turning positive by reflecting your physical presence. Dark clothing makes the effect most dramatic.
This passage from foggy obscurity to knife-edge clarity has particular meaning with respect to the artist's background and subject matter.
Born in Vietnam, Danh has spent most of his brief career as an artist investigating, directly or obliquely, the human and spiritual aftermath of the American War, as they call it in Southeast Asia.
Several of the source images for Danh's new daguerreotypes, such as "Ghost of Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum #1" (2008), come from the archives of the Khmer Rouge, the revolutionaries who took power in Cambodia and executed legions of innocent civilians, after carefully documenting them.
That the Khmer Rouge captives knew they faced imminent annihilation adds emotional heat to our view of their individual expressions. "Ghost of Tuol Sleng ... #1" shows a young man whose dignity appears impressively undimmed by his fate.
The Tuol Sleng daguerreotypes will strike with exceptional force American viewers old enough to remember that the Khmer Rouge, a fringe group of extremists, gained political traction only after the Nixon administration extended its already catastrophic anti-Viet Cong bombing campaign into Cambodia.
The antiquated daguerreotype process - which yields a unique artifact, not an edition - seems to set Danh's images even further back in time than the decades that separate them from the events they commemorate. He has complicated this effect by mingling images of Khmer Rouge victims with daguerreotypes based on his own photographs of contemporary Buddhist monks and ancient Cambodian temples.
Danh's picture of a Khmer region temple sculpture of Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, brings to mind the question why spiritual forces did not intercede in the killing fields. Because of their subject matter, Danh's daguerreotypes reveal themselves, at least to American eyes, with the impact of memories, or faded nightmares, escaping repression.
It will surprise anyone who thinks that size matters in art to find that Max Gimblett's perfectly respectable paintings, which take up most of the space at Haines, are eclipsed in impact and meaning by Danh's much more intimate works.
Binh Danh: In the Eclipse of Angkor: Tuol Sleng, Choeung Ek and Khmer Temples: Daguerreotypes. Max Gimblett: The Midnight Sun: Paintings. Through Feb. 28. Haines Gallery, 49 Geary St., San Francisco. (415) 397-8114, www.hainesgallery.com.
This passage from foggy obscurity to knife-edge clarity has particular meaning with respect to the artist's background and subject matter.
Born in Vietnam, Danh has spent most of his brief career as an artist investigating, directly or obliquely, the human and spiritual aftermath of the American War, as they call it in Southeast Asia.
Several of the source images for Danh's new daguerreotypes, such as "Ghost of Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum #1" (2008), come from the archives of the Khmer Rouge, the revolutionaries who took power in Cambodia and executed legions of innocent civilians, after carefully documenting them.
That the Khmer Rouge captives knew they faced imminent annihilation adds emotional heat to our view of their individual expressions. "Ghost of Tuol Sleng ... #1" shows a young man whose dignity appears impressively undimmed by his fate.
The Tuol Sleng daguerreotypes will strike with exceptional force American viewers old enough to remember that the Khmer Rouge, a fringe group of extremists, gained political traction only after the Nixon administration extended its already catastrophic anti-Viet Cong bombing campaign into Cambodia.
The antiquated daguerreotype process - which yields a unique artifact, not an edition - seems to set Danh's images even further back in time than the decades that separate them from the events they commemorate. He has complicated this effect by mingling images of Khmer Rouge victims with daguerreotypes based on his own photographs of contemporary Buddhist monks and ancient Cambodian temples.
Danh's picture of a Khmer region temple sculpture of Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, brings to mind the question why spiritual forces did not intercede in the killing fields. Because of their subject matter, Danh's daguerreotypes reveal themselves, at least to American eyes, with the impact of memories, or faded nightmares, escaping repression.
It will surprise anyone who thinks that size matters in art to find that Max Gimblett's perfectly respectable paintings, which take up most of the space at Haines, are eclipsed in impact and meaning by Danh's much more intimate works.
Binh Danh: In the Eclipse of Angkor: Tuol Sleng, Choeung Ek and Khmer Temples: Daguerreotypes. Max Gimblett: The Midnight Sun: Paintings. Through Feb. 28. Haines Gallery, 49 Geary St., San Francisco. (415) 397-8114, www.hainesgallery.com.
