TRONG G. NGUYEN projects.......resume


Women's Room, Serbian Prison Camp, 1992
2005, sheared grass installation at Socrates Sculpture Park, Long Island City, New York
from the series Floor Plans
212 x 254 inches (dimensions variable)



For the biennial exhibit FLOAT at Socrates Sculpture Park, a life-size architectural rendering of a single room containing seven beds can be seen on the grass, complete wih a door, which serves as the "entry point." "Women's Room" references the novel S., by Slavenka Drakulic.  It is a recreated layout of a room where Bosnian women were imprisoned and confined by Serbian soldiers, kept for the simple purpose of being raped by the enemy. In this Spartan space, daily knocks on the door horrificly signified which girl's turn was next.

Women's Room presents a nightmarish experience and reality that so many of us choose to ignore.

Floor Plans
1998-present


Floor Plans is a sophisticated series of life-size architectural "room installations" that adapt to the host space.

When a viewer enters any exhibition space, he or she determines the conditions for looking at art -- how long to look at the work, under what aesthetic criteria, and so on. By disrupting this control mechanism, via the simple act of displacement and location, Floor Plans takes all these "looking choices" away, leaving the viewer powerless to manipulate the viewing process.

By entering inside the outlined "wall-less walls" painted in a pre-existing building or shorn from the lawn at Socrates Scupture Park, the conditions are set for him or her to reluctantly play out the event, whether that be a re-enactment of a Sartre drama or scrutinizing counsel Kenneth Starr's bachelor pad.Figuratively speaking, the installation transports the viewer into a "ladened" space the moment he or she physically steps over the line, through the threshold, and enters the "exhibition space." Knowledge of the reference prods viewers to "experience" and consider on a more immediate and wrenching level the historical abomination that persists globally in one form and place or another, whether that be in the Balkans, Iraq, or Guantanamo Bay.


Huis clos (No Exit)
1998/2007, mixed media installation (ABOVE: Lower Manhattan Cultural Council)
with floor paint and HUIS CLOS light from the series Floor Plans
Dimensions variable




Huis clos is an installation comprising two components. The first is a NO EXIT sign that is an alteration of the common EXIT sign found in any public building. Huis Clos references the Jean Paul Sartre play of the same name, a narrative about three individuals who have died and gone to Hell for the rest of eternity. There they find that Hell is not fire and brimstone, but a comfortable second empire drawing room primarily furnished with three sofas. Soon enough, each discovers that he or she is the other's "torturer"-- "Hell is other people."

The second component is a lifesize schematic floor plan painted directly on the floor. Except for its boundaries, which extend to follow the perimeter of the overall exhibition space, the floor plan is a recreation of the original Huis clos stage set, depicting three sofas, a hearth, and small table.