Work in Progress: Tuan Andrew Nguyen

Tuan Andrew Nguyen is in the throes of making a new kinetic sculpture for his solo show with Galerie Quynh at Frieze Seoul 2024. Working in Saigon, Nguyen suspends military ordnance in mobile webs of sound and form. He reflects on the physical demands of metalworking and what it means to use objects and materials with a capacity to hold and subvert time, narrative and identity.

Livia Russell Can you talk about your new work for Frieze Seoul?

Tuan Andrew Nguyen I’m working on a large sculpture. It will be a suspended, circular piece, about three metres in diameter, comprising various kinetic elements, some of which are cast from bomb metal found in Quang Tri, one of the areas in Vietnam that is still dealing with an extraordinary amount of UXO (unexploded ordnance) buried in the land. I’m imagining a fragmented sun. An explosion of sorts. There will be some bells tuned to 432Hz and other sound elements. Other sculptures in this body of work have deliberately focused on exposing the raw material of the metal and brass, but I’m excited to play with colour in this one.

There’s also a series of 57mm ballistic shells found in Quang Tri. These shells have been turned into bells, almost like a wind chime, with a mobile element hung from the bell that acts as a wind catcher. The mobile element harks back to Alexander Calder and his fictional reincarnation, who appears in a film I made called The Unburied Sounds of a Troubled Horizon (2022).

LR How does this work fit within your œuvre?

TAN I am continuing to work with objects and materials that were left from wartime, mostly UXO. The fact that there is an almost endless supply is daunting and tragic, but thinking about how people have been living with these objects and transforming them into useable objects in their daily lives has been a source of inspiration.

I’ve been thinking a lot about materials being able to subvert our understanding of time and identity, searching for materials that could help us translate death to life, destruction to healing. I have been thinking about death objects, objects that embody reincarnation, objects and materials that resist stasis in form and structure. In what ways can objects hold narrative and time?

LR Are there new sources of inspiration in your current work?

TAN I’ve been working with found broken Buddha statues. Here in Vietnam, broken spiritual objects are taboo and are often disposed of after certain rituals are performed. I think about how to save and renew these objects by adding other materials and forms to them.

LR What does your day in the studio look like right now?

TAN There’s a lot of sweating in the studio. It’s been extremely hot in Saigon and we’re working with a lot of metal at the moment: heating, bending, melting, pouring, welding, pounding, sanding and polishing. It’s physically demanding. Between the active physical labor of manipulating metal, there are some windows of time where I get into a very meditative state as I try to create compositions using weight and balance. There’s so much satisfaction that comes from balancing objects.

LR How do you see your practice developing?

TAN When I was working with The Propeller Group, we thought a lot about public spaces and structures and especially public monuments. I’ve been returning to thinking about public space and monuments recently. I’ve been thinking about fallen monuments and how they function in our everyday psyche. What happens when we see an object that has existed through time suddenly get removed or toppled? What rifts and ruptures exist in those spaces? I’m excited to explore scale and time in public space.

Watch: Tuan Andrew Nguyen in Indra’s Net at Frieze London 2022

Further Information

Frieze Seoul, COEX, 4 – 7 September 2024.

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^{Main Image: Tuan Andrew Nguyen in his studio}