TRACES OF INFINITY
2018 - present
Installation
Mixed media collaborative installation by wind, rain, spirits, plants, earth, bones, flesh, plastic bag, coffee roots, funeral flower, beehive, sound, parabolic antenna, beads, insects, weather, temperature, time…
Dimension variable
‘Traces of Infinity’ is an impromptu of objects in the gallery space, consisting of reddish brown nylon covering the
walls and a giant sculpture hanging in the air. Inspired by materials collected from the Central Highlands of Vietnam,
Truong Cong Tung creates a surrealistic scenario reminiscent of this sacred land where nature blends with artificiality
and order blends into chaos.
The layers of plastic were originally fertilizer packaging, left on the plantations, worn by weather and insects. Over
time, they became dyed with the typical red color of the basalt soil of the Central Highlands. It is this fertile soil that
nurtured the bygone forests, now replaced by a number of industrial plants. It is soil that haunts; once it clings to
something, it persists. The eternal nature and soil devour and hold tightly the temporary plastic, abandoned to the
environment. Plastic sheets gradually become artificial skin, grafting nature into their own body – beautiful as a
painting. Rain, wind and natural temperature co-author with Truong Cong Tung to create the texture and color of this
abstract series. Hidden among these ‘soil skins’ are the artist’s golden poetic verses musing on the history and evolution
of mankind. Where prehistoric people used soil to draw their history in caves, the artist now uses metallic ink to
tattoo the cycle of the universe and human beings on this hybrid-soil-skin layer.
Not only the soil is hybrid – the sculpture of this installation also derives from an obscure entity: ‘the hybrid ghost’.
Truong Cong Tung is obsessed with the figure of the ‘hybrid ghost’ from an oral myth in the Central Highlands – it
separates its head to go to eat at night; it eats everything non-stop because it has no stomach to feel full. The coffee
root is the ghost’s head. When the root was alive, it exhausted the soil of the bygone forest. After being uprooted, it
swallows all the natural, household and industrial objects surrounding it: tiny LEDs, microphones, USBs, a beehive,
cicadas shells, a satellite dish, funeral flower frames, etc. The sculpture is the artist’s experiment in hybridizing fragmented
objects to create a narrative and living whole.
