Rencontre avec Pratchaya Phinthong

Ptratchaya Phithong has kindly agreed to meet with us before his return to Philippines. The Organ of Destiny, title of Pratchaya Phinthong's new exhibition, brings together in Paris villagers from the plains of Xieng Khouang province and the ghosts of the Vietnam War in the mined fields and forests of Laos. The exhibition space becomes the place where everything is transformed, from one object to another, from one function to another, from one medium to another. Mirror sculptures pay homage to the initiative of Stephen Sumner, a cyclist amputee who, cured of the pain of the phantom limb thanks to mirror therapy, teaches it in turn to amputees in Laos. A night vision camera makes its way through the forest, evoking a rumor about bombs trapped in the trees. On the floor, several sculptures made of cardboard cutouts and metal, on which clay leaves seem to grow. For Pratchaya Phinthong, the exhibition is an organic space-time, where geopolitical, artistic and microeconomic realities come into play in a discrete and reformulated way. The artist creates open systems where the traces of the past are led towards the emergence of new possibilities.