» Time: The Donut of the Heart

Talk with Vy Trinh

Sculpture is a unique medium because of the linked intimacy between form, context, and content through the process of making. To be with sculpture is to think through and with space, materiality, and form. To make sculpture is to employ a specific methodology towards contentions of gesture, physicality, feeling, and meaning. Fundamentally, it is a practice devoted to breadth and inclusivity. In the contemporary moment, to make sculpture is to deal with all things microscopic and monumental, subtle and blunt, real and imagined. How are these encounters “metabolized” to create meaning and to help us understand the environment we are surrounded by?

Designed based on the perspective of a sculptor encountering the works featured in White Noise, in this talk, Vy Trinh responds to the exhibition by extracting selected formal and conceptual elements from the show and putting them in conversation with contemporary sculpture practice through a method she refers to as “sampling”. Vy describes: “I always reference ‘sampling’ as a method used in my own practice – a technique in Hip-hop where musicians would take a pre-existing sample and use it in a new way. Donuts (2006) has always been one of my favorite ‘batches’, perhaps because it was the last album J Dilla did before he died and the fact that he made it on a ‘potato’ (1) made it even more quirky and unique. Time: The Donut of the Heart is my favorite track. Even when the clock runs out of time, sculpture will always be the donut of my heart.”

Similar to the ant in White Noise that crawls through different bodily fragments, Vy thinks across different bodies (of artworks), time(s) and place(s), and finally, asks us to think with her: What does it mean to make sculpture now?

This event is part of a series of public and education programs in association with White Noise, an exhibition organized by Nguyen Art Foundation.

(1) “Potato” is a slang term for potato PC, a word used to describe a computer that is built using minimal and low-cost components. J Dilla produced Donuts on a SP-303 (which is a low-tech device) in his hospital bed at the end of his life, but the tracks that came out of it were musically complex, incredible, and full of life.