Perpetual Painting
2022, oil on canvas
10 modular panels
Each canvas 199 x 115 cm

In Perpetual Painting, the artist has painted a very long table still-life composed using downloaded objects from Google’s 3D warehouse. Nguyen has created a set of equal-sized, “modular” paintings depicting a single table that can vary in length, perhaps even stretching on forever. It is reminiscent of Vladimir Putin’s preposterous meeting tables, in which the strongman is portrayed sitting at a great distance from his “subjects.”

Besides the left and right canvases that show opposite ends of the table, all the middle panels of Perpetual Painting can be re-arranged or left out to form different tableaus. The artist incorporates object/models that were found via general search terms like “dictator,” “romance novel,” “kitsch painting,” and “sleeping cat.” Retreating into a more fluid digital realm that evades limitations.

Nguyen’s new sculptural arrangement is uploaded into the 3D library as a single file, where users can easily download the “painting” and conceivably edit and view it from other angles, beyond the freeze frame of the IRL (in real life) work itself.

3D Warehouse link