Portals: Tran Truong

839 is pleased to announce “Portals,” a solo exhibition of paintings by Tran Truong. This exhibition brings together nearly fifteen years of Truong’s practice, including early trompe l'oeil pieces alongside more recent abstract depictions of interior and intimate spaces. 

Truong’s 2010 paintings depict domestic objects such as doors and window blinds rendered in actual size, employing a trompe l'oeil technique. In “Door,” 2010, the subtle interplay of light and shadow enhances the realism of an apparent front door’s ornamental woodwork. The effect is intensified by the artist’s insertion of a readymade peephole embedded in the surface, facing outward toward the viewer as if the piece is looking back at its audience. The painting rests directly on the floor, leaning back against the wall behind it, heightening its status as an object. 

In a more recent interpretation of the subject, “Doors,” 2022, offers an expressive field of dark brown brushstrokes delineating two rectilinear door shapes and the hallway wall they share. Behind each door, vibrant yellow strips of paint indicate a warm, glowing light–perhaps hinting at an offscreen gathering of friends or family. 

Elsewhere, in “Untitled (Bra),” 2019, Truong utilizes a heavily reductive formal approach to capture an up-close image of a woman’s chest, with her top parted to frame her torso and her breasts implied beneath two black arches. In this work as in others, the artist uses subtle tonalities and spare shapes to conjure slight disruptions, the sensation of nostalgia, and the kind of after-imagery that accompanies a remembrance of places and people from the past.