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Hằng Hằng, La Raison Est Un Chien. La Raison Est Une Fleur., vue de détail d’exposition, Galerie Bao, Paris, 2025. Photo: Nancy Karam, courtesy de Galerie Bao.
Here is an excerpt from the exhibition essay written by Stéphane Degoutin for The Reason is a Dog. The Reason is a Flower (2025). It is Hằng Hằng’s first solo show at Galerie Bao, Paris.
Hằng Hằng calls her installation a “garden”. The word feels familiar, reassuring, but nothing here resembles a place of greenery or rest. The gallery is immersed in an intense saturated chroma-blue, the very same blue once used for video backdrops. One feels that everything here could be erased, replaced, rewritten.
Even the air carries an imprint. It is infused with a scent that recreates petrichor, the characteristic smell of wet earth rising when rain falls on dry soil. Hằng Hằng composed it with the help of International Flavors & Fragrances (IFF).
Shimmering fragments with a metallic sheen are suspended within this monochrome field, while on a screen, a house in Vietnam collapses under the force of machines. Two histories unfold in parallel yet never converge.
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