HCMC – Exhibition “1972-2015: Works by Hoang Duong Cam and Trong Gia Nguyen”

Opening: Thu 19 Nov 2015, 6 pm
Exhibition: 19 Nov – 19 Dec 2015
Galerie Quynh

From the organizer:

Come to exhibition “1972-2015: Works by Hoang Duong Cam and Trong Gia Nguyen”.

In this two-person exhibition, Hoang and Nguyen contend with issues of movement, displacement, refuge, and migration. Hoang’s atmospheric paintings reference the period around 1972, when his parents married and many Vietnamese were forced to leave their homes. With a simple Google search of ‘1972 Vietnam’, Hoang uses a pinhole camera to reshoot the result images, particularly those that exhibit a sense of fleeing. He then repaints them in monochrome, dotting them with mental abstractions of puzzled color, giving fragmented context to an already blurry time in his history, just before the artist was born. Personal memory and stories of childhood fantasies are interwoven, as the artist celebrates with characteristic irony a dramatic period of Vietnam’s recent history.

Similarly, Nguyen’s recent relocation to Ho Chi Minh City from New York City re-shapes personal notions of home and domestic space. His playful yet charged sculptures superimpose an uneasy American Dream over the Saigon landscape. In one work, the iconic ‘white picket fence’ gets reconfigured into a ‘modular yellow picket fence’, contoured to resemble a hashtag symbol. Nguyen’s ‘landscaping’ dislocates and casts a movable shadow over all that is seemingly fixed. Another work called ‘Wash in the Rain’ features a clothes rack and poncho made from raw materials that a painting might comprise of: canvas, wood, metal fasteners. The rain poncho made out of raw canvas and the wooden coat rack shortened to only hold the one cloak are rendered as impractical household items. The traditional format of a rectangular canvas stretched on wooden bars is no longer applicable – and therefore convention in general – to frame or give context to the usual practices and foreign nature of ‘language’ in Vietnam.

ABOUT HOANG DUONG CAM

One of Vietnam’s most daring conceptual artists, Hoang Duong Cam (born 1974, Hanoi) completed his studies at the Hanoi University of Fine Arts in 1996. Hoang has participated in numerous exhibitions and biennales in Asia, North America and Europe. Notable exhibitions include Eagles Fly, Sheep Flock: Biographical Imprints – Artistic Practices in Southeast Asia, curated by Khim Ong for Art Stage Singapore 2015: Southeast Asia Platform; Electronic Pacific, SOMArts, San Francisco; VideoZone 5, the 5th International Video Art Biennial, Tel Aviv, Israel; Daegu Photo Biennale, Daegu, South Korea; Arts and Cities, Aichi Triennale, Nagoya, Japan; Connect: Art Scene Vietnam, ifa Galerie Berlin and Stuttgart, Germany; Fluid Zone, Jakarta Biennale, Indonesia; Post-Doi Moi: Vietnamese Art After 1990, Singapore Art Museum, Singapore; the 3rd Guangzhou Triennial, Guangdong Museum, Guangzhou, China; Migration Addicts (Mogas Station), a collateral event of the 52nd Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy; Thermocline of Art. New Asian Waves, ZKM | Museum of Contemporary Art, Karlsruhe, Germany; and Belief (Mogas Station), Singapore Biennale 2006. In 2009 he held a residency at the acclaimed Tokyo Wonder Site, Japan. Hoang Duong Cam has been living and working in Ho Chi Minh City since 2001.

ABOUT TRONG GIA NGUYEN

Trong Gia Nguyen (born 1971, Saigon) is a multi-disciplinary artist known internationally for his diverse body of works that often examines structures of power in their myriad forms, making attempt to scrutinize the soft foundation upon which contemporary life plays out, often behind the façade of fairness, sincerity, tradition, and civility. Nguyen’s work includes everything from iPhone applications (Metaphysical GPS) to installation, film, painting, sculpture, performances, and web-based projects. Nguyen received his MFA from the University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, USA. He has exhibited internationally in numerous solo and group exhibitions, and has received awards and residencies from the Museum of Arts & Design (New York), Artist-in-Residence in the Everglades, LegalArt Miami, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Harvestworks Digital Media Center, Bronx Museum of the Arts, and Puffin Foundation. Trong Gia Nguyen lives and works between New York and Ho Chi Minh City.