Lacquer on wood,  dust, metal frame, mica. Spatial installation, dimensions 80 x 80 cm.

Description

In Tùng’s moving-image, the figure of a white, heatless sun appears at the beginning and again toward the end. With its halo clear and pure, this solar sphere floats like a crystal ball, its premonitions becoming opaque behind the silvery mountain mist. Once again, Tùng resurrected this sun in physical form, imbuing it into the lacquer painting with a circular frame, hung in the middle of the room, from a series titled In the wind up the sky in the garden... Shadows out there (2020 - ongoing). Hidden under the fleshy, crimson lacquer surface, we can see traces of tree branches, golden bone pieces, tiny insects crawling, green moss, or the remnants from previous centuries: all of them combine to paint a slice of his home-landscape. The garden of Trương Công Tùng itself has turned into a mirror that reflects both what is inside and outside of the self, where thoughts, memories, and losses were carefully layered, crocheted, and twisted into one another, creating a complex entity that resembles order within chaos. And the artist, like a gardener, continues to diligently till the soil, excavate its treasure, sow the seeds, connect and sand away the narrative layers of a land that has bear its chest in an act of subtle defiance under the moon and sun for centuries. In that journey, the artist’s only companies are water, the moon, the stars, fireflies, grass, dust, air, time, space, dreams, and the eyes of the elephant.

Description is excerpted from the essay by Dương Mạnh Hùng from "The Disoriented Garden…A Breath of Dream" Exhibition Booklet, 2023, p.41-43.