Matter of Time: Khôi Phạm
There is a quiet vibration within the ordinary that San Jose-based artist Khôi Pham seeks to amplify, pushing past the surface of familiar objects until something unexpected emerges. He begins with a camera, isolating fragments of the physical world. Through drawing, digital distortion, and reconstruction, these fragments are stretched beyond their origins. Pham’s work lingers between observation and transformation, where the everyday is not simply documented, but intensified. The overlooked does not disappear - it takes on a strange and luminous presence.
Two Two is proud to present Pham’s work in the Bay Area for the first time since his return to his hometown in 2025.
Produced between 2019 and 2021 while living and working in New York, each work is a unique (1/1) dye sublimation on aluminum, where the artwork is heat-infused into the surface, forming a singular and permanent object.
72.5 x 48 in
48 x 40 in
50 x 40 in
Artist Statement
I was 12 when I started working at my dad’s photography studio, tucked into a small plaza between a liquor store, a Denny’s, the world’s first Chuck E. Cheese, and a motel. The plaza was worn down by the sun, and the unhoused people in the parking lot would occasionally step inside to ask my dad for cigarettes.
Customers varied, from families in pressed clothes, to teenagers celebrating quinceañeras, to sex workers posing for ads. They stepped in front of the backdrop, adjusted themselves, and settled into a version of themselves as they wanted to be seen. The photographs were clean, composed, and distant. Whatever laid just beneath the surface stayed there.
I think about that space often. It was where I first noticed the distance between what was visible and what was carried. The stories stayed with the person, just out of reach, while the image fixed something simpler in place. Over time, those unseen parts began to feel more present than what was shown.
My work grows out of that distance. I return to ordinary objects and fragments of everyday life, drawn to what they might hold beyond what they show. What feels familiar begins to turn uncertain, like a memory held onto for too long.
Khôi Phạm