EXHIBITION DETAILS
Venue: Noirfoto Gallery, 131 Dương Văn An, Bình Trưng, Ho Chi Minh City
Opening Time: 5:00PM – 8:00PM | 23/05/2026 | Saturday
Exhibition Time: 10:00AM – 6:00PM | 24/05/2026 - 14/06/2026 | Monday - Sunday

Every object carries within itself a unique structure, a distinct nature that reveals itself only under sufficiently intense observation. Some landscapes appear immediately and complete before our eyes, while others only become visible when one truly knows how to see. The world does not solely exist outside of us; it is constantly being shaped by how we perceive it. From May 23, 2026, Noirfoto Gallery presents the solo exhibition Inscape by the lens-based image maker Tom Hricko. Here, the public is once again invited to witness the ordinary world emerging as new and extraordinary visual possibilities through the eyes of an artist who is always attentively observing, seeking, and exploring.

THE ARTIST TOM HRICKO AND HIS ARTISTIC JOURNEY

“What comes after death?” – it is the timeless question that both torments and compels humanity to live. But for the artist, there may exist another question even more unsettling: “What comes after one’s retrospective exhibition? Could it be extinction–the ultimate ending?

Four years after his retrospective Alternate Existence/s held in 2022 – an event marking a creative journey spanning nearly half a century – Tom Hricko returns with renewed energy in a personal project bringing together works from the last two years. Here, he continues to expand his visual language while deepening photographic experiments that are at once complex and poetic. What emerges is not only the rare resilience of a long-standing art practice, but also the sustained capacity for self-renewal of an artist who simultaneously builds upon his legacy and transcend the limits which seem to already set. At any age or stage of life, his creative journey remains in motion as an ongoing process.

Tom Hricko – an American fine art photographer and photography educator – began his career in the 1970s. Through the breadth of his practice, he belongs to a generation of artists who have witnessed and moved alongside photography’s most profound transformations: from the darkroom era and manual printing to the emergence of digital technology and the fundamental changes in how images are created, preserved, and received. However, what defines Hricko’s unique position and appeal is not merely the length of his career, but his continual ability to redefine photography as a medium for thought and exploration. In his art, photography does not stop at the function of recording fleeting moments of reality; it becomes a means to experiment with and deepen his gaze, to uncover hidden things, to open up alternative realities, and to play with space and time. Since the 1990s, Hricko has lived and worked across multiple cultural and geographic spaces in the United States, Vietnam, and Cambodia, as well as in several other countries during shorter periods of stay. These cross-border experiences became an important source of inspiration, while also shaping the perspective of an artist who gradually made movement an integral part of his being. Over time, Hricko’s work has come to extend beyond the expression of any single culture, emerging instead as the synthesis of experiences: a passage through life where one observes, receives or refuses, selects, and weaves together the essentials of existence to continue growing and creating. Curiosity about undefined and mysterious horizons, and tireless labor to open up perspective and enlarge the world, combined with faith in intuition and the unrevealed – all are qualities that allow people, especially the artist Tom Hricko, to be truly alive and perpetually young.

NOIRFOTO GALLERY AND THE "FOR THE ART OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MISSION

Established in 2017, Noirfoto Gallery has consistently operated with a commitment to promoting and fostering the development of the art of photography. With this spirit, the gallery presents and works with Vietnamese and international photographers over the long term – from emerging talents to established names – those who are persistently working and creating with photography as a genuine form of art.

Through exhibitions built on a foundation of meticulous selection, creative curatorial thinking, in-depth understanding of the medium of photography, and the ability to discover unique artistic personalities, Noirfoto continuously connects art lovers, collectors, businesses interested in culture, and serious practitioners in the field of photography.

More than any other art form, photography deeply intertwines with modern and contemporary life. It transcends national borders, is shared across all societies, yet consistenly opens up unique ways of seeing. Therefore, a photography exhibition is not just about viewing images, but also an opportunity for viewers to reflect on the very world they inhabit: on time, memory, space, present, represent, loneliness, the desire for connection, and things that seem familiar but remain largely unseen.

From that understanding, Noirfoto approaches photography not as a practice confined by geography or local identity, but as a medium capable of touching upon universal human questions that arise everywhere. A work doesn’t need to depict Vietnam to resonate with a Vietnamese audience; what matters is the depth of vision and the ability to awaken experiences that anyone may recognize within themselves.

Many artists have placed their trust in and collaborated with Noirfoto during multiple important stages of their careers. Tom Hricko is one of them. In 2022, Noirfoto Gallery presented a retrospective exhibition to Vietnamese audiences, bringing together a diverse body of photographic works alongside numerous archival artifacts, thereby illustrating the full depth of his art journey spanning many decades. The exhibition received significant attention and positive responses from the public, professionals, and the press.
In 2026, out of deep admiration for an artist of tireless creativity with profound connection to Vietnam, Noirfoto continues to present Tom Hricko’s latest works, created after his retrospective exhibition. This new exhibition is curated by art educator and artist Hương Mi Lê, who also accompanied Hricko in the previous project, and who has developed an interpretive framework that places the artist’s practice in dialogue with the concept of inscape for this showcase. This is not only an occasion to encounter once again a veteran artist who continues to create with rare energy, but also an opportunity for the public to enter new ways of seeing, experience other layers of reality, and rediscover their own capacity to perceive the world.

THE INSCAPE EXHIBITION: NARRATIVE AND WORKS

If the retrospective exhibition Alternate Existence/s reveals the unique capacity of photography to see through and lift the veil between realities, then Inscape brings the viewer closer to the very source of true observation: the unique nature of the artist, an inner force that continually encompasses, constructs, and give rises to his art.

The concept of inscape was proposed by the poet and priest Gerard Manley Hopkins to refer to “the distinctive design that constitutes individual identity”. According to Stephen Greenblatt”s interpretation of Hopkins’s view, everything in the universe possesses an unique inscape, an intrinsic principle that makes it what it is and not something else. This identity is not static but always dynamic and self-enacting. Humans, “the most highly selved, the most individually distinctive being in the universe”, are capable of perceiving the inscape of other beings through an act Hopkins called instress: an intense concentration of perception directed toward the object, through which its subtle differences are brought into view.

Most of us may pass through life without ever perceiving the inscapes of the countless beings and things in the universe, but the artist Tom Hricko has used his life to observe, discover, and reveal countless hidden essences within the visible world. In his works, individual inscapes do not exist in isolation, but connect, overlap, and interact to form larger structures, a space apprehended through time, or a stream of time revealed through multiple layers of space – countless smaller essences woven into the vast totality of the world.

In his Geometry of Presence series, Tom Hricko begins by exploring the influence of light and shadow on man-made objects and structures. He also examines the interplay between foreground and background within visual composition, together with the transformative potential of basic geometric forms under the effects of perspective, layering, and mapping relationships. From familiar objects and scenes of everyday life, he constructs near-abstract forms where the boundaries between object and image, mass and void, recognition and perception become unstable. He further intensifies visual illusion and pushes abstraction to a deeper lever through the juxtaposition of imagery layers in the Mergers and Acquisitions series. The result of this continual process of restructuring and layering objects and spaces is a set of multi-dimensional visual fields, where surfaces collide, merge, and constantly shift, leaving the viewer no longer facing a stable reality, but entering a constantly evolving visual structure – at once familiar and strange.

In the series Shift and Weave, metal fences and foliage – entities that both divide and encroach upon one another – intertwine, while buildings from different cultures and historical periods merge into shared visual fields. These images become metaphors of the encounter between the man-made and the natural, between boundaries and flows, and between cultures that constantly intersect and transform in the movements of humankind, including that of the artist himself.

Meanwhile, the Landscape image can be seen as a gesture to pay homage to the early experiments of Tom Hricko himself, when he “fabricated” landscapes through photography. Here, he continues to explore the distinctive nature of the medium as a tool capable of shifting space and dimension, particularly through the language of black and white. At the same time, the work also suggests relationships between presence and representation, between reality and illusion, between different perspectives interwoven within two-dimensional and three-dimensional spaces.

With powerful institution and a sensitivity deeply rooted in his soul, through keen powers of observation and a masterful understanding of photographic techniques, the artist Tom Hricko – throughout his decades long creative journey – has drawn upon everyday life as his material to construct near-abstract compositions and surreal scenes that rise beyond the immediate surface of the world. Each of his works is a gateway to another world, or further still, into wondrous realms where multiple realities coexist, appear and disappear, and intersect. For this reason, his works always invite viewers to pause and contemplate at length: to move between an overall gaze and a closer encounter with the work, gradually entering the pictorial space often presented at a large scale, like expansive windows and at times resembling maps. The inspiration stemming from the artist’s curiosity will spread, motivate, and accompany the viewer as they search for and come to recognize what lies hidden within.

The photographs in Cityscapes are a quiet ode to the survivors of history: the architectural structures of Phnom Penh, bearing upon their facades the histories of both themselves and the nation. Exposed to time, they present unapologetically their weariness, yet remain elegant – aged, but never stripped of dignity. Through the language of black and white photography and his characteristic image manipulations, Hricko once again constructs scenes suspended outside any definite time of day, as metaphors to the weight of history sedimented in the urban space. From there, this scene is no longer just a landscape to behold, but becomes a symbol for contemplation.

Finally, in the Wat Phu Champassak series, the artist witnesses and represents how the essences of nature and humanity are constantly intertwined over time, eventually becoming one. It is in this perspective that we also recognize what may be the inscape of Tom Hricko himself: a poet using photography, creating by continually weaving himself into the universe.

CLOSING REMARKS

In an age where images flash by so quickly and novelty is ceaselessly replaced, Tom Hricko reminds us of the value of sustained devotion, as well as the importance of a gaze that is attentive and probing. For him, time does not bring creativity to a close; on the contrary, it enriches the depth of perception and the power of art practice. For Hricko, experiences do not lead to repetition, but become the foundation of new explorations. Across many decades, he has retained his curiosity, his intensity of labor, and his faith in the power of vision. There are artists who create works, and there are artists who create ways of seeing. The exhibition Inscape is a reminder that as long as the eyes remain capable of wonder, life and art still lie ahead.

Founded in 2017, Noirfoto Gallery is an art space with a dedicated focus on analog and contemporary photography. Through carefully curated works, each artist represented by the gallery brings a distinctive personal language, diverse in themes, styles, materials, and techniques. More than just an art gallery, Noirfoto Gallery aspires to elevate the client’s experience through professional consulting services, flexible logistics, and a trial-display policy, bringing art closer to everyday life.
AGAD provides art-related services as effective, sustainable, long-term solutions for essential business challenges, supporting businesses by connecting brand image with the essence of art: creativity, endurance, sophistication, refinement, aesthetic appreciation to create differentiation, thereby attracting customers, enhancing reputation, and building sustainable competitive advantages.

NOIRFOTO GALLERY
131 Dương Văn An Street, Bình Trưng Ward, HCMC
+84 345 170 401
gallery@noirfoto.com
Monday - Friday: 10:00AM - 5:00PM
Saturday, by appointment: 11:00AM - 4:00PM
Sunday: Closed