Last Supper at CERN
2009, raw canvas, wood table, turntables, vintage gospel records, acrylic paint
38 x 300 x 36 inches

Last Supper at CERN is an irreverent spaghetti dinner set on records and turntables. The work remixes Leonardo's masterpiece as a cacophonous deejay battle between science and religion, whereby pasta and tomato sauce, made from acrylic paint, are served on classic vinyl records and placed precisely on a table that is the same size as its reference in Leonardo's painting.

The strands of spaghetti spell out text messages, a la SMS, on the black vinyl "thought bubbles," mimicking a conversation. As Leonardo's image depicts the climactic moment after Christ announces "one of you shall betray me," so too does Nguyen's pasta-fest signify the inevitable, momentous discovery of the Higgs boson. Instead of messiahs and disciples, the participants here are scientists at the Large Hadron Collider reacting to the discovery of the "god particle."