In her work Betty Bui sometimes makes use of change of scale or
transformation of objects in order to draw the outline of an imaginary
world in which our mind sets the limits of what is realistic: a gigantic
book-like bed; water-lilies with springs underneath them, as fairytale
trampolines; giant footsteps floating on a river... She draws the
contours of a possible deviation of reality by shifting so delicately
certain elements or objects of our daily life. Betty Bui’s work places
itself in between the change in usage and the appropriation of commonly
known signs, for distorting objects and images are for her a way to
express the possibilities of the unlikely in all things, aspects or
views of our world.
Bui likes to take us from shared references to an improbable and poetic
world. She explores the gaps between images and our knowledge of their
exactness. Her videos then become a space where the imaginary replaces
reality and is a way for her to offer a loss of position, of direction
and meaning.
By using simple effects, Bui offers something light and easy to
comprehend: a softly breathing water-lily; an undulating landscape
showing earth’s gravity gone mad; the shadow of a lemon on a red
tablecloth showing an evident acceleration of time. When exploring
landscape, Bui most rightly makes the link with painting and the
screen’s capacity for its illusionary powers. Paysage sous influence
shows rain falling on plush green hills, slowly transforming into a
painting. It is most of all the pictorial quality of images which is put
forward, as if to show that all representation is above all an artefact.
There is no lesson that should be learned from what should or shouldn’t
be our comprehension or our environment, but rather amusement and
pleasure in the way to induce doubt. A homeopathic dose of unreality in
our certainty and pragmatic way to grasp the nature of our surroundings.
- Text by Guillaume Mansart -