HCMC – Galerie Quynh – Food for Thought

Opening: Thurs 19 Feb, 6-8pm
Exhibition: 20 Feb-14 Mar 2009

Hand-decorated ‘cakes’ with personalized text, writing on ‘spaghetti and meatball’ plates and small, transparent mylar bags filled with tiny rice grains bearing words feature in the show.  As the idiom asserts, Food for Thought stimulates our intellect, encouraging an engagement with art that appears to be actual food. Deceptively frivolous and playful and brimming with wry humor, the works raise questions about our notions of food as language and the symbolic inference bestowed upon it.
Born in Saigon in 1971, Trong Gia Nguyen graduated with an MFA in painting from the University of South Florida. He has exhibited nationally and internationally in both solo and group exhibitions, including Sequences 2006 (Iceland), 9th Havana Biennial (Cuba), Conflux 2007 (Brooklyn) and Performa 05 (New York). Nguyen has received grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Harvestworks Digital Media Center, Bronx Museum of the Arts and Puffin Foundation. He currently serves on the Fashion in Film Festival advisory board and has previously lectured at Location One, New York University, Columbia University, Icelandic Art Academy and Catalyst Foundation.

Food for Thought can be viewed online after March 2, 2009.