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Trọng Gia Nguyễn

Vietnamese Soup Cans / Miến Gà from the series Perpetual Paintings, 2025

SketchUp file, output as a unique artist’s version in the form of double-sided archival prints on Hahnemühle hemp paper.

42 x 29.7 cm (unframed)

Framed: 45 x 33 x 4 cm (17.72 x 12.99 x 1.57 in)

Edition. open source SketchUp file, output unique to the artist

Inv: TGN_2025-019

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Location: Delivered to / Pick up by Collector

In 2021 a flood in New York destroyed a significant portion of Trọng Gia Nguyễn’s artworks and archives, a material loss that inspired Perpetual Paintings, a series that exists initially as SketchUp files stored publicly on Google’s 3D Warehouse. These digital “paintings,” ranging across many forms (including photography and sculpture), can be downloaded and produced as needed, scrutinizing ideas of supply and demand, rarity, and ownership. Trọng regularly updates the files, thereby challenging the notion of a singular, definitive artwork,

In Vietnamese Soups, a subset of Perpetual Paintings, Trọng reimagines Warhol’s iconic soup cans as Vietnamese varieties. Unlike the flatness of silkscreen prints, the VR files reveal each object in full 360 degrees. On their reverse sides, viewers encounter “poetic recipes” written by the artist, blending propaganda with subversion and dark humor. For this series, Trọng prints one scene from the front and one from the back of a can, framing them together as a two-sided work. All files remain freely downloadable, reinforcing reproducibility as a central principle.

About the artist

Trọng Gia Nguyễn

Vietnamese

b. 1971

Trọng Gia Nguyễn is a Vietnamese-American artist, writer, curator, and designer living and working between Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam and Brussels, Belgium. His diverse body of works examines the fragility of personal history and structures of power in their myriad forms.

Regularly employing humor while at other times engaging sober reflection, Trọng’s work elevates the condition of doubt as it reveals and disrupts the undercarriage of our most trusted spaces – domestic, cultural, political, and economical. His scope of production includes everything from painting, to installation, film, sculpture, performances, web-based projects, and iPhone applications.

Crossing over into design and fashion, he has collaborated with brands such as Ordinaire, LA Loop, Be&D, and Lacoste. Trọng has exhibited in galleries and museums internationally, including Galerie Bao (Paris), Galerie Quynh (Ho Chi Minh City), La Patinoire Royale (Brussels), NON (Berlin), The Private Museum (Singapore), and Orange County Museum of Art (California), etc. His works are represented in notable private and public collections including Cornell Museum of Fine Arts, 21st Century Hotels, Antwerp Museum of Contemporary Art, Servais Family Collection, Foundation CAB, and many others.
Image of artist