Examining the golden hour
The term “golden hour” has many meanings. Medics describe it as the critical time between life and death experienced by trauma patients where medical intervention can still have a successful outcome while landscape photographers use the term to articulate the transition of light between night and day.
The two meanings are presented in a juxtaposition of two aesthetically disparate series of photographs by Melbourne-based artist Cyrus Tang during the “Golden Hour” exhibition at Galerie Oasis until Jan 12.
This is Tang’s Bangkok debut showcase of haunting and moving photos which explores experiences of damage and loss. She used overlaid long exposure times to record the reactions of her friends and strangers with Chinese cultural backgrounds to films related to Hong Kong, Chinese cultural issues and history.
This extended period of reflection exposes private memories and emotions to the lens, producing images that are a powerful convergence of past and present. The figures are swathed in skeins of soft motion-blur as they shift in and out of comfort or attentiveness and seem to be almost mummified as well as radiating an unearthly, ghostlike presence. Tang also used exceptionally high-speed photographic exposures to capture split second images of destruction. She built model fantasy cities out of white fired ceramic and then fired bullet-like missiles into these models, exploding them in fragments and splinters and releasing clouds of choking dust.
The traumatic eruption of this unaccountable violence is disturbingly reminiscent of the scenes of destruction from wars in Syria and Yemen. And yet, these images also seem to radiate an unnerving beauty of transience manifested in the aurora-like plumes of the explosions.
Galerie Oasis is on Sukhumvit 43 and is open on Wednesdays until Sundays from 1-9pm. Call 02-258-7376.