26 October 2024 - 5 January 2025

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The photographs of Viriya Chotpanyavisut are living entities; they live on air and sun; they are energies, fluxes and life paces; they are at the origin of a new way of seeing life; they are the beginning of something else. Through the lens of his camera, Chotpanyavisut reveals another dimension that blends reality with dream. Like a Haiku written in three lines, each picture reveals different layer of emotion with the quiet contemplation of a particular place at a particular time. Each photograph is a sort of short poem that unfolds itself through meditation. As in a haiku, where most of the poem is written in the mind of the reader, the photography of Chotpanyavisut is only the spark that opens new emotions in the viewer’s mind. The exhibition The Beginning of Something Else becomes the beginning of a mindful journey that does not end in the gallery, but continues in the everyday moments of life.

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Among grey brambles, 
A green vine grows slowly, 
Climbing among spines.

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The exhibition evokes deep, indescribable emotions, as Chotpanyvisut’s photographs leave viewers speechless. Among the exhibition, each photograph incorporates its own story, at the beginning of a contemplative journey. The object of each photograph is a sort of ‘objet trouvé’  – a ‘found object’ – showing things as they are. However, the image does not stop there as it triggers the imagination. In that aspect, the image becomes an ‘émotion trouvée’ – a ‘found emotion’. Without explanation, a feeling raise from each image, traveling from the heart to the mind. We begin to grasp why the photographer chose each moment, and while the topic of the photograph seems self-explanatory, it eludes verbal explanation. We understand the ‘what’ but not the ‘why’. We feel the picture more than we see it.

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White feathers glowing,
Two swans drift on moonlit lake,
Light fades into the darkness.

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The photographs of Chotpanyavisut give life to an apparently immutable world, showing how matter and time flow through physics and biology. It is a question of time-space scale, but everything born and dies, and the artist role is to catch a snapshot of this process. In his work, the artist travels among multiple species: a ladybird, some swans, a vine growing in the spines of  brambles, or a tree caught in a concrete cast. Life unrolls itself in front of his eyes, From that perspective, he becomes a witness of a secret world in which he wanders silently. In this exhibition, he reveals to us his observations, paradoxically both obvious and hidden. His eye certainly catches the unseen, and share with us a way to find unseen miracles, that we often miss because of our lack attention for simple things.

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Wrinkles of an old tree,
The shadow of a green leave dances,
Sun and wind tell us a story.

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The photographs of Chotpanyavisut are living entities in the way that they inhabit the observer’s mind: if the images are framed on the exhibition wall, they are also floating freely in the imagination. Indeed, if the subject of each picture is often printed on the centre of the frame, a wordless poem develops itself far beyond the limit of the paper. The composition is straightforward, but the aura is shining in the whole exhibition room. Each picture has multiple layers of complexity. If the composition is clear, the meaning is still to uncover. In a way, the picture only exists in the viewer’s mind: when looking at a dead leaf, we can reflect on the fragility of ephemeral life; When looking at the wrinkles of the tree, we imagine its life journey from the seed to the strong tree it has become; when seeing a ruin covered by weeds, we see the decay human order in profit of the wilderness; etc.

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A concrete frame looking into wild,
An orthogonal square inhabited by chaos,
Slowly, green weeds embrace our gray world.

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In this exhibition, you will go through a collection contemplative instants and discover hidden feelings that can not only be found inside these walls, but everywhere around you, in your everyday life. The photography of Chotpanyavisut is an invitation to rediscover the world through your senses, in your direct surroundings. Through the observation of your environment, you can experience new emotions and find new meanings. Look no further than modest phenomena: a shadow on a wall, a ladybird under the sun, a tree growing out of its concrete frame. The immanent world becomes the portal to the world of celestial ideas, that you as an active spectator, can uncover. With our mind, we can realise the same work that Chotpanyavisut does through photography, and explore unknown parts of our imagination while contemplating physical and biological realities.

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Sweet sunny afternoon,
A leaf and its shadow float in the living room,
Will their tips finally touch?

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In The Beginning of Something Else, Viriya Chotpanyavisut invites us to go beyond mere observation and to reinterpret our surroundings through contemplation and imagination. His photographs share the artist’s own vision, and suggest to expand our understanding of a pure reality but miraculous reality. As we move in the exhibition, we can discover multiple stories that will uncover layers of emotions, thoughts, and unexplainable meanings. Moreover, the work of Chotpanyavisut continues out of the gallery, as it opens to a new dimension. In this way, the exhibition is only the beginning of something else: the beginning of a new way of seeing simple things through a careful and poetical observation of our direct environment.

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Olivier Bellflamme