CHI L. NGUYỄN



Good Luck, Here Comes Infinity
Aqueous Altar
As Below, So Above 2
As Below, So Above 1
Golden Lakes


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      How Small A ...(Thought)... 






      How Small A ...(Thought)..., 2021
      Acid-treated mirrors
      Dimensions variable



      This installation took inspiration from Steve Reich’s work entitled Proverb (1995) - a musical composition for voices and ensemble for a duration of 14 minutes. The whole piece has a repetitive ‘speech melody’ of the text “How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life!”.

      The short text, written in 1946, originally comes from a collection of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s writings titled Culture and Value. 

      I was fascinated by the proverbial paradox from Wittgenstein’s text and the visual-sonic layers from Steve Reich’s musical piece. It leads to this reflective sculptural ensemble where audiences’ interaction also plays a part in-between the contrasting elements of the small-ness of a thought to the whole-ness of life. Will the participants’ reflections times and again become visual resonances of the proverbial line from Proverb? 

      The text is hand-crafted (acid-treated) and made see-through. The word “thought” here is put in parentheses, placed next to a line of dots so that the audience can fill in their own terms.