Jim Thompson Art Center

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The disoriented garden… A breath of dream cover
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Exhibitions / Gallery 1 & 2, 3rd Floor

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The disoriented garden… A breath of dream

Deeply immersed in materiality and spirituality, Trương Công Tùng's solo exhibition, titled “The disoriented garden… A breath of dream,” at the Jim Thompson Art Center, Bangkok, offers a poetic yet haunting perspective on various complicated issues in the Central Highlands, Vietnam. From an installation made of natural and artificial elements that he foraged to a video artwork that interlaces the visuals and sounds from his hometown in Gia Lai Province,

Trương employed a diverse spectrum of media to gesture toward unspoken stories of ecological disruption and social politics. Stepping into Trương’s exhibition is also akin to taking a leisure stroll through a mythical secret garden, one that is immersed in a trancelike ambience in which the audience can temporarily unfocus their consciousness and allow their senses to take over. Watch the ghost lights play chase across the screen, listen to the faint reverberations of water, breathe in the smell of soil and seeds: the garden awaits those who wish to see differently.

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    Truong Cong Tung, Study of The Disoriented Garden… A Breath of Dream, 2023-ongoing, Drawing on tracing paper. Photo: Marisa Srijunpleang. Courtesy of Jim Thompson Art Center.

  • Truong Cong Tung, The Disoriented Garden… A Breath of Dream, 2023-ongoing, Video installation: Single channel video, sound, color, 69”. Photo: Marisa Srijunpleang. Courtesy of Jim Thompson Art Center.

    Truong Cong Tung, The Disoriented Garden… A Breath of Dream, 2023-ongoing, Video installation: Single channel video, sound, color, 69”. Photo: Marisa Srijunpleang. Courtesy of Jim Thompson Art Center.

  • Truong Cong Tung, The Disoriented Garden… A Breath of Dream (detail), 2023-ongoing, Video installation: Single channel video, sound, color, 69”. Photo: Marisa Srijunpleang. Courtesy of Jim Thompson Art Center.

    Truong Cong Tung, The Disoriented Garden… A Breath of Dream (detail), 2023-ongoing, Video installation: Single channel video, sound, color, 69”. Photo: Marisa Srijunpleang. Courtesy of Jim Thompson Art Center.

  • Truong Cong Tung, The Lost Landscape, 2023-ongoing, Lacquer on wood, dust, metal frame. Photo: Marisa Srijunpleang. Courtesy of Jim Thompson Art Center.

    Truong Cong Tung, The Lost Landscape, 2023-ongoing, Lacquer on wood, dust, metal frame. Photo: Marisa Srijunpleang. Courtesy of Jim Thompson Art Center.

  • Truong Cong Tung, Dance of the Insects, 2020-ongoing, Single channel video, sound, color, 15”19’. Photo: Marisa Srijunpleang. Courtesy of Jim Thompson Art Center.

    Truong Cong Tung, Dance of the Insects, 2020-ongoing, Single channel video, sound, color, 15”19’. Photo: Marisa Srijunpleang. Courtesy of Jim Thompson Art Center.

  • Truong Cong Tung, In the wind up the sky in the garden… Shadows out there #3, 2023-ongoing, Lacquer on wood, dust, metal frame. Photo: Marisa Srijunpleang. Courtesy of Jim Thompson Art Center.

    Truong Cong Tung, In the wind up the sky in the garden… Shadows out there #3, 2023-ongoing, Lacquer on wood, dust, metal frame. Photo: Marisa Srijunpleang. Courtesy of Jim Thompson Art Center.

  • Truong Cong Tung, The State of absence… Voice from outside, 2020-ongoing, Installation: Gourds, water, soil, seeds, machinery, time, and temperature, Dimension variable. Photo: Marisa Srijunpleang. Courtesy of Jim Thompson Art Center.

    Truong Cong Tung, The State of absence… Voice from outside, 2020-ongoing, Installation: Gourds, water, soil, seeds, machinery, time, and temperature, Dimension variable. Photo: Marisa Srijunpleang. Courtesy of Jim Thompson Art Center.

  • Installation views of Gallery 2. Photo: Marisa Srijunpleang. Courtesy of Jim Thompson Art Center.

    Installation views of Gallery 2. Photo: Marisa Srijunpleang. Courtesy of Jim Thompson Art Center.

  • Truong Cong Tung, Portrait of Absence, Part of the project “The Sap Still Runs”, 2019-ongoing, Engraved on mirrors. Photo: Marisa Srijunpleang. Courtesy of Jim Thompson Art Center.

    Truong Cong Tung, Portrait of Absence, Part of the project “The Sap Still Runs”, 2019-ongoing, Engraved on mirrors. Photo: Marisa Srijunpleang. Courtesy of Jim Thompson Art Center.

“The disoriented garden… A breath of dream” will open on June 13th, 2024 and run until August 18th, 2024 in Gallery 1-2 of Jim Thompson Art Center. The exhibition is a joint endeavor supported by both the James H.W. Thompson Foundation and the Han Nefkens Foundation’s Southeast Asian Video Art Production Grant, to which Trương is the 2023 recipient. The artist Trương Công Tùng and curator Dương Mạnh Hùng would like to extend their most sincere gratitude to the board members of the J.H.W. Thompson Foundation, Dr. Gridthya Gaweewong the director and staffs from the Jim Thompson Art Center, Supernormal Studio.

Truong Cong Tung

b. 1986

Artist

Born in 1986, Truong Cong Tung grew up in Dak Lak among various ethnic minorities in the Central Highlands, Vietnam. He graduated from the Ho Chi Minh Fine Arts University in 2010, majoring in lacquer painting. With research interests in science, cosmology, philosophy and the environment, Truong Cong Tung 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 ecology, belief or 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 non-formal knowledge via artistic and cultural activities in various public contexts and locales.

Truong Cong Tung has exhibited extensively in Vietnam and abroad as a solo artist and as part of Art Labor Collective. Select recent exhibitions include “Truong Cong Tung at Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles” (2023), “O Quilombismo, Of Resisting and Insisting. Of Flight as Flight. Of Other Democratic Egalitarian Political Philosophies”. Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Germany (2023), “Signals…瞬息,” Para Site, Hong Kong (2023), Is it morning for you yet? 58th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh, USA (2022), “A State of Absence…Words out there” A collaborative installation by plants, insects, earth, water, ash, air... and Trương Công Tùng, Manzi Art Space, Hanoi, Vietnam (2021), “The Sap Still Runs” (2019), San Art, Ho Chi Minh City, Bangkok Biennale (2018), “Between Fragmentation and Wholeness” at Galerie Quynh in Ho Chi Minh City (2018), “A Beast, a God, and a Line” at Para Site, Hong Kong (2018) and Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw (2018), Dhaka Art Summit, Dhaka (2018), Cosmopolis, Collective Intelligence, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2017), “Soil and Stones, Souls and Songs” at Para Site, Hong Kong (2017) and Kadist, San Francisco (2016), “Across the Forest,” an installation for Project Skylines with Flying People 3 at Nhà Sàn Collective, Hanoi (2016), “Gestures and Archives of the Present, Genealogies of the Future” at Taipei Biennial, Taiwan (2016), and “Ghosts – Spies – Grandmothers”, at SeMA Biennale Media City, Seoul, Korea (2014)

Hung Duong

Curator

Hung Duong or Duong Manh Hung is an independent translator, writer, and curator. His practice weaves textual intricacy with visual subtlety to deliver responses and raise questions about diverse art-related topics. Hùng’s interest in the dynamics between visual arts and translation is informed by his close observation of global and Southeast Asian socio-political and ecological histories. Hung has contributed exhibition reviews, interviews, and essays on Vietnam and Southeast Asia for multiple contemporary art platforms, including artforum, ArtAsiaPacific, and Art & Market (Singapore).

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