BURST

Verb: sculpture as a Burst

Five! Four! Three! Two! One!

Boom!!! And crackle…

Metal rods erupt from a motorbike disc brake. The force of explosion sends off ribbons of light. What flies up drips down in chains and clusters. In the blur, the moment goes uncaptured.

Yet the moment is there, present, presently. The metal rods keep erupting, ribbons flying, chains dripping. Where the metal rod is bent, it is not bent: bend in the past, but bending, still, to the movements of the hands, hands that move, still, with ease and resistance. Trịnh’s methods of making do not result in “finished work”—a product that is the culmination of actions with beginnings and ends employed to manipulate materials—but actually are the work. Her making processes reject the hierarchy of skill, where painting is considered a high-level craft reserved for the artist, braiding rattan a simple sequence of repetitions carried out by quote-unquote craftswomen, and welding a demanding and precise task that is nevertheless denigrated as mere manual labour, as if manual labour, as with all forms of making, is anything short of alchemical. If methods of making are the work, and methods of making are methods of transition (of things changing states to become other things), then the work is always in transition—a work in the present tense. More than representations of signs and symbols, Trịnh’s sculptures are actants that affect and are affected by non-/super-human entities, and the “fibrous, thread-like, wiry, stringy, ropy, capillary character” of the relations between those entities.

In Trịnh’s Streetlight works, the moment occurs and demands attention. If mopeds are dreams, then streetlights are spectacles. Beyond their function of lending vision to street dwellers and deterring nightcrawlers, streetlights serve to beautify. Dazzle, sparkle, stun. Contact us today for the Most Advanced! lighting technology to enhance the city’s urban beauty, because eye-catching streetlight designs are not just decorative, but act as unmissable reminders of the country’s remarkable achievements in development! The more the country prospers, the greater the human need for “aesthetics and artistry”, so much so that that artistry is now everywhere, illuminating boulevards and alleyways alike, until the spectacle becomes a fact of life, and the need to drive development goes uncontested. But before there were streetlights, there had to be streets; and for there to be streets, obstacles must be removed for the imminent flattening. It is just as well that residents will “voluntarily demolish their houses and hand over land to expand roads”, and though scores and scores of irreplaceable ancient trees have to be felled, the pavements will be replanted with new greenery to, again, ensure urban beauty. Streetlights are actants that affect and are affected by: the neighbour who brings his karaoke machine out to the front yard; the tamarind tree whose wood will be auctioned off by the HCMC Technical Infrastructure Centre; the white-robed artist who won’t cry-cries-won’t-cry for the 300 trees she hugged before their felling; the beautiful prospect of a future overpass. -Thái Hà. *

Streetlight 1, 2024
motorbike disc brake, steel rod, nickel-plated steel ball chain, plastic beads, satin ribbon, organza ribbon and adhesive
152 x 200 x 195 cm

Streetlight 2, 2024
motorbike disc brake, steel rod, nickel-plated steel ball chain, plastic beads, metallic ribbon and silver wire twist ties
145 x 150 x 138 cm

Streetlight 3, 2024
motorbike disc brake, steel rod, nickel-plated steel ball chain and plastic beads
166 x 230 x 190 cm

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More about the exhibition: https://www.galeriequynh.com/exhibitions/137-on-da-dream-vy-trinh/

On Da Dream @ Galerie Quynh
August 10 - October 12, 2024

On Da Dream,2024