HOA-LAN TRAN GALLERY
WAKING
LIFE; DREAMING LIFE
EXHIBIT BY HOA-LAN TRAN
THE ORIGINAL CONCEPT
When I began working on this project, my original intent was to investigate the natures of my waking and dreaming worlds, day and night, light and darkness. I explored the natural contrasting qualities of these opposing worlds and, also, how they influenced and fed each other.
As I began working, I came to understand that another theme was emerging -- the structure of light and the absence of light, or darkness. I began to think of time and light being of the same nature. The structure of time suggested a cyclic repetition of hours during the day, of hours during the night; and, on a larger scale, of months and seasons of the year. The day, in effect, was a microcosm of the year, each having the same essential structure.
What was the nature of these hours?
Each hour was different, composed of a different nature, a different texture, a different color because it was composed of a different light quality.. I began to conceive of this project as a twelve-part structure, composed of sets of daylight hours, and sets of night hours, dusk and dawn.
I inquired: how is the night different from the day? How is dream-perception different than visual daylight perception? It seemed to me that sleep was a kind of veil that fell over our human natures, forcing our vision inward. And so I began working with that veil, working on gauze, thrown over us by night -- that same gauze which was the mosquito netting under which I had slept for most of my life while growing up in Vietnam.
I had a revelation: at night the veil was on the outside; during the day, this veil was on the inside. The veil was the unconscious mind, which was in power during the night, and which lost its power, retreating inward during the day.
Each of the hours was composed of two natures, an inside nature and an outside nature, the veil and the substance under the veil, the substance and the veil under the substance, night and day.
STRUCTURE
OF THE EXHIBITION
My investigation of the structure within which I wished to work began with a diagram of the hours.
I have developed 24 pieces for the exhibition (30 inches wide by 7 foot-9 inches long), 12 pieces representing day and 12 pieces representing night -- that is, each piece has a composite inside and outside piece. In addition to these main 24 pieces, each Hour composite also has an intermediating middle-piece between the two opposite, opposing hours, a mediating soul standing between the material solar day and the spiritual lunar night.
I first thought of developing the work in an extended Figure 8 structure, but found it less interesting as a three-dimensional form in an installation. I then considered rotating the night or shadow hours inside of the daylight hours, creating a kind of circle within a circle. The night hours became the inside arc; and the day hours became the outside shell. The hours were now aligned as a perfect mirror image, with midnight and noon aligned back-to back, with dusk and dawn also aligned back-to-back. The form now took on the imagery (and symbolism) of a ring.
Each 'hour' describes the nature of light through color, imagery and form -- as well as dream-imagery connected to that specific time station. The work is 'lit' on the day side, , generating a sunlight metaphor. Light passes through the day hours and illuminates the inside or night world as reflected light, much as the reflective moonlight (the moon reflecting the sun's light) illuminates the night.
The work is hung as an installation, with each piece suspended from a slender wooden bracket which is suspended from the ceiling. The exhibit is hung so that visitors enter the internal Night side of the exhibit at dusk, 6:00 p.m.. When exiting, the viewer enters the external day side of the exhibit at dawn, 6:00 a.m., as the light is being 'born again'.
The installation has a meditative, almost monastic feel. The hours are, themselves, the structure inside of which we all live our lives. They represent, at the same time, in a symbolic sense, the stages of the human life.
SELECTED
HOURS
6:00
AM
7:00
AM
8:00
AM
9:00
AM
10:00 AM
11:00 AM
12:00 PM (NOON)
1:00 PM
3:00 PM
4:00 PM
5:00 PM
6:00 PM
8:00 PM
9:00 PM
10:00 PM
2:00 AM
4:00 AM
SELECTED DETAILS
TIME
AS MICROCOSM AND MACROCOSM
Many religious systems speak of life as a relationship between the Macrocosm (God, Totality) and the Microcosm (Humanity, the reflected part of the Macrocosm).
The Earth also has a manifested Macrocosm-Microcosm system related to its time. The Year on Earth is divisible into four parts or seasons: So is the day divided in to four parts.
The year has a day and a night, also a noon and a midnight, a dawn and a dusk.
Here are the Macrocosmic and Microcosmic divisions of time on Earth into 4 parts:
Microcosmic
Diurnal Division Macrocosmic
Annual Division
Dawn: 6:00 AM Spring Equinox, March 21
Noon: 12:00 PM Summer Solstice, June 21
Dusk: 6:00 PM Autumn Equinox, September 21
Midnight: 12:00 AM Winter Solstice: December 21
This understanding of nature as a circle of time has triggered the spiritual concepts of Heaven, Hell, Re-Birth, Reincarnation -- and is the basis of most ancient culture's understanding of Time as a circular event.
Roman Catholics developed an elaborate ritual of prayers and prayer books which honored each of the different hours with different prayers performed daily as a recognition of the meanings of the circular pattern of life -- and of Christ's life particularly.
There is no way to study the nature of the hours without an appreciation of the spiritual ideas that lie behind the division of time as a manifestation of God's reason and the inherent order of creation. Whether we are discovering God's reason or, instead, using our own mental powers to organize Chaos, will probably be argued for ever, depending upon individual persuasions and needs. Of course, individual persuasions and needs also evolve over time.
WHY
A THREE-PART SYSTEM
My work is an examination of the duality of day and night, of material light and anti-material darkness. The day is more clearly more material; hence, the day hours are developed on mulberry paper, much more material than the mosquito netting gauze which describes the night. But the dualism of the opposition of day and night seems to suggest a constant state of opposition and antagonism.
There is matter, the day system, the system of the body; and there is spirit (anti-Matter in the language of modern science). These forces are locked in a constant struggle for power. But there is also a third part component of this unity: a soul, composed of both matter and anti-matter.
The soul is the intermediary between the world of light and the world of darkness. The soul is the bringer of peace, for the soul was on the side of light and also on the side of darkness, in alternating periods. The soul brings messages from the gods to humanity; the soul also brings supplications or prayers from humanity back to the gods.
The day panels are colorful relief prints on Japanese mulberry paper, created with a collograph of swirling marks printed relief with colored inks, The multi-layering of the daylight images are done with the combined techniques of woodcut, collograph, stencil, gold-leaf, silver-leaf, watercolor, colored pencil, and transferred images. In each piece, I have cut the mulberry paper in a swirling pattern of gold where the sun sits on the paper -- each panel describes the rising and setting sun as it moves around the external circle of panels.
The sun is stationed near the bottom of the 6:00 a.m. panel; and it begins its literal ascent through the morning hours. The sun's pinnacle is at Noon. Then the sun image moves down the panels, through the afternoon hours, toward its setting place at 6:00 p.m.
The night pieces have a comparable silver moon orb moving in harmony with the external sun, moving up and down the paper as well -- in a sense communicating with and borrowing light from the sun.
The day pieces are mostly opaque, with strong light emitted through the lace-work cuttings, becoming filtered light as it appears in the night panels.
The night pieces, by contrast, are transparent, -- lacy mosquito netting, also with a colorful swirling collagraph background of a unique color, highlighted with woodcut and metallic painted images.
The middle pieces, the soul pieces, are not elaborate in design, and are composed on crinkled pieces of tracing paper, rice paper, Thai Kozo paper, which are shaped and waxed to enhance transparency,, a medium for transmitting light. The waxing also makes the paper more durable and tear-resistant. The middle pieces also add a certain level of ambiguous shape and mysterious texture to the otherwise-straightforward duality.
This work is designed to stand in the museum as a sculptural, three-dimensional work of art. The print-work is not placed under glass against a wall; it is a floating, suspended sculptural work intended to have a spatial reality, as time also has a spatial reality. When the viewers enter the work, they experience a unique sense of place that has an atmosphere of spirit, the vitality of life and the changes of life's energy in time.
THE LIGHTING STRUCTURE
The work is to be lit by strong external lighting shining on the daylight hours, with the strongest beam focused on the latticed sun image in the noon panel The light is less intense but equal at both 11:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. The light is even less intense and equal at 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. This diminishing light continues as it passed toward dawn on one arc and toward dusk on the other arc. 9:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m have equal lighting. 8:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m have equal lighting. The same is true for 7:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m; and for 6:00 a.m, dawn, and for 6;00 p.m., dusk. In each case the light is focused on the cut sun pattern as it moves up and down the daylight panels.
There is to be no direct lighting in the night space inside the ring. The external lighting, passing through the cut sun image on the daylight panel, passes, also, through the corresponding moon image in the night panels. This creates a lattice of light, of differing intensities, constructing a cathedral of light in the inside space of the installation.
THE MEANING OF COLOR
The collagraph background of each panel in the exhibit has a different color. In my mind, one of the primary 'meanings' of this work exists in the progressions of colors, which progression constructs an elaborate color wheel.
The primary color triangle has its apex at noon (yellow) and its base points at 8:00 a.m. (red) and at 4:00 p.m. (blue). This corresponds to the upright (ascending) triangle in the Jewish Star of David symbol. The secondary colors are created by the primary colors; and these secondary colors form the descending triangle with its reversed apex at 6:00 p.m. (purple, created by combing red and blue), and its corresponding base points at 10:00 a.m. (orange, created by combining red and yellow) and 2:00 p.m. (green, a mixture of yellow and blue).
The Night pieces have a reverse color pattern to the day pieces -- that is, the night is a mirror image of the day. The primary color triangle is the descending triangle, with its apex at midnight (yellow), and its two bases at 8:00 p.m. (blue) and 4:00 a.m. (red). In the night panels, the secondary color triangle is rising, with its purple apex at 6:00 p.m., its orange base-point at 2:00 a.m. and its blue base point at 8:00 p.m.
The night and the day, anti-matter and matter, are mirror-images of one another. They will always be at odds because they always appear to be at odds. The man raises his right hand; and his reflection in the mirror appears to be raising his left hand. Matter is the mirror image of anti-matter. When matter and anti-matter collide -- that is, when they have no mediating principle to keep them separated, they annihilate each other.
The day colors are all mixed with white paint (and with a trans-base, to make the color less pastel).to give the color a luminescent look. The night colors are mixed with black paint, giving a shadowy, gloomier and more mysterious hue to the panels.
There is more complexity to the color patterns. The primary background collagraph colors of each piece are supplemented with a counter-point color. I will give an example of this. The 8:00 a.m. piece has a red collagraph background; but its layered imagery in the foreground is composed primarily of green tones, which is the opposite of red on the color wheel. The 4:00 p.m. piece has a background of blue; and foreground images are composed predominantly of its color wheel opposite, orange tones.
This point-counterpoint color structure also occurs in the night pieces.
Point-counterpoint exists in this work relative to Day-Night; point-counterpoint also exists relative to color components in the same world, light and darkness-in-light, dark and light-in-the darkness.
CONCLUSION
When I first started work on Waking Life; Dreaming Life I thought that I was creating the art. But I soon discovered that if I was creating the art, the art was also creating me.
I was creating a vision in my work; but the work was also creating a vision in me. I did not know where my work was leading me. I was forced to follow the work, follow it through darkness, uneasiness, a lack of clarity. I had to give up control of this process. The work had a life of its own. I learned to follow its shapes, its colors, its meaning.
I learned from the work. I learned to have faith that the work was leading me in the right direction. That the work knew what it was doing.
The more sensitive I was to the life of the work, the more easily we worked together in a purposeful dialogue.
Art, to me, is a religious discipline. It is a process through which I can communicate with my better nature.
There is a force inside of me which creates the world for me, gives me gifts and understandings.
The more I learn to listen to this force or spirit or nature, the more robust becomes my appreciation of beauty, my desire for expression, and my appreciation of life's treasures.
Hoa-Lan Tran can be reached at:
Return to Hoa-Lan Tran / Michael J. Clark Portfolios page;
http://www.hoalantrangallery.com/HLT1.htm
Return to Hoa-Lan Tran Printmaking page:
http://www.hoalantrangallery.com/HLT3.htm
Return to Hoa-Lan Tran BFA Project Prinkmaking page:
http://www.hoalantrangallery.com/HLTPrintmaking1.htm