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Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

  • Exhibitions
    • Current
    • Upcoming
    • Past
  • Calendar
  • Learning
    • Artist Residency
    • Bookshelf Residency
    • Digital Projects
    • Public Programs
    • Schools & Community
    • Special Projects
  • Visit
  • About
    • Staff
    • Governance
    • Press
    • Partnerships
    • Opportunities
    • Annual Report
  • Shop
  • Get Involved
    • Membership
    • Patron Groups
    • Institutional Support
    • Artist Edition Series
    • Sustainability
    • Corporate
  • Donate
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Back To Exhibitions
Trương Công Tùng June 10, 2023 ➽ September 10, 2023
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Trương Công Tùng June 10, 2023 ➽ September 10, 2023

Trương Công Tùng

Project Room
Trương Công Tùng, _the state of absence–voices from outside, 2020–ongoing. Gourds, water, soil, seeds, machinery, time, and temperature, installation dimensions variable. Courtesy the artist. Commissioned by Carnegie Museum of Art for the 58th Carnegie International

Drawing upon mystical ritual and indigenous mythologies, the work of Trương Công Tùng (b. 1986, Đắk Lắk province, Vietnam) is characterized by a poetic sensitivity to history, landscape, and materiality. His dynamic installations often incorporate natural materials that bear the traces of time and the echoes of generations and are composed in such a way as to reimagine the land from a site of colonial empire to one of communion. Disrupting the boundary between the physical and spiritual worlds, Trương’s practice reconfigures elements of each to reframe the relationship between the living and the inanimate.

Trương’s first museum solo exhibition brings together a constellation of sculptural and video works produced over the last three years. At the gallery entrance is a curtain of wooden beads made from a combination of coffee, cashew, and forest trees, all of which have been exploited throughout the artist’s homeland in the Central Highlands of Vietnam due to the relentless forces of war and industrialization. Created in homage to the dislocated, extracted, and disappeared, the network of suspended beads invites visitors to reflect on their own connections to these complex histories of people and place. Also on view is an installation made from gourds, water, soil, and seeds. The gourds are joined by a web of clear plastic tubes through which flowing water and earth create an undercurrent of migration from one gourd to the next. Each is sealed with a glossy finish made using lacquer, a once-prized and heavily traded material that is derived from tree sap. In the lacquerware painting tradition, lacquer is added to an object’s surface and then polished to reveal the hidden layers beneath. For the artist, this unearthing is a sacred act.

Reminiscent of the forest depths with its darkness, shadows, and gentle hums of insects and other life, Trương Công Tùng’s living exhibition requires ongoing cultivation and care, allowing it to become a metaphor for, and a journey of, co-existence and transformation.

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Installation view, Trương Công Tùng, Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, June 10–September 10, 2023. Photo: Jeff McLane/ICA LA
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June 10, 2023, 2023, 3 PM - 6 PM
Open House at ICA LA
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Openhouseemailer summer2023

July 05, 2023, 2023, 7 PM - 8 PM
Artist POV Tour + Performance: Jason R. Nguyễn on Trương Công Tùng
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Jason nguyen

July 14, 2023, 2023, 6 PM - 7:30 PM
Art Buzz: Trương Công Tùng
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Icala 2023 06 12 014

July 08, 2023, 2023, 4:30 PM - 6 PM
ASL Tour of Summer Exhibitions + Reception
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Asltourgraphic2

August 26, 2023, 2023, 10:30 AM - 5 PM
Back-to-Back Artist-Led Tours: Phung Huynh on Vietnam in Transition, 1976–Present and Bruce Yonemoto on Trương Công Tùng
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August 16, 2023, 2023, 7 PM - 8:30 PM
Virtual Conversation: Quyên Nguyễn-Hoàng and Trương Công Tùng
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Exhibition Guide (Vietnamese)
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August 03, 2023, 2023
Trương Cong Tung Sees History in a Gourd
Trương Công Tùng is organized by Amanda Sroka, Senior Curator, with Caroline Ellen Liou, Curatorial Assistant.
Trương Công Tùng (b. 1986, Đắk Lắk province; lives in Ho Chi Minh City) grew up in Đắk Lắk province among various ethnic minorities in the Central Highlands, Vietnam. He graduated from Ho Chi Minh Fine Arts University in 2010, majoring in lacquer painting. With research interests in science, cosmology, philosophy, and the environment, he works with a range of media, including video, installation, painting, and found objects, which reflect personal contemplations on the cultural and geopolitical shifts of modernization, as embodied in the morphing mythology of a land. He is also a member of Art Labor (founded in 2012), a collective working between visual art and social/life sciences to produce alternative nonformal knowledge via artistic and cultural activities in various public contexts and locales. Trương’s has exhibited extensively in Vietnam and abroad, both as a solo artist and as part of Art Labor. Recent exhibitions have been held at institutions including the 58th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh (2022); Manzi Art Space, Hanoi, Vietnam (2021); San Art, Ho Chi Minh City; Galerie Quynh in Ho Chi Minh City (2018); Para Site, Hong Kong (2018); Dhaka Art Summit, Dhaka (2018); Kadist, San Francisco (2016); Nhà Sàn Collective, Hanoi (2016); and the Taipei Biennial, Taiwan (2016). He is also the recipient of the inaugural Han Nefkens Foundation—Southeast Asian Video Art Production Grant 2023, in collaboration with Sàn Art, Vietnam; Sa Sa Art Projects, Cambodia; the Jim Thompson Art Center, Thailand; Museion, Italy; Busan Museum of Art, South Korea and Prameya Art Foundation, India.
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132 Barbara T. Smith: Proof 2023-10-07 2024-01-14
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129 Trương Công Tùng 2023-06-10 2023-09-10
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130 Carmen Argote: I won’t abandon you, I see you, we are safe 2023-06-10 2023-09-10
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126 Milford Graves: Fundamental Frequency 2023-02-11 2023-05-14
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