Across the highlands of Vietnam, gourds have stored water, made music, and inspired legends for centuries.1 In his travelling solo show, Truong Cong Tung finds yet another use for these sinuous plants. The state of absence… Voice from outside (2020–ongoing) is an installation of soil boxes upon which dried, lacquered gourds of miscellaneous shapes and sizes appear to pump liquid through tangles of clear PVC piping. The illusion created by these crudely networked calabashes, a few of which overflow with seeds, burbling fluid or slowly expanding plumes of iridescent foam, is of a brittle, delicately balanced biosphere or microcosmos. Listening to its clicks and murmurs, I sense it’s one that is operational yet tilting towards decline: the larger of Jim Thompson Art Center’s two galleries also houses a video-projection screen wreathed with foraged detritus (twigs, a satellite dish, lengths of gauzy fabric, curtains of threaded wood beads, et cetera). Meanwhile, a dusky ochre glow and strong shadows evoke a state of autumnal decay.
