Name: Trong G. Nguyen
Location: New York City
Expertise: Art (painting, photography, film, sculpture)

Trong G. Nguyen is a modern-day Renaissance Man, an artist who got his MFA in painting but refuses to let himself be categorized according to genre. Whether he’s producing iPhone apps, custom trucker hats, archival inkjet prints, videos, sculpture cakes, infinity mirrors, applying oil to canvas, or commenting on the non-reality of reality TV (as he did on Bravo’s Work of Art), Nguyen’s left-of-center work aims to make people stop and think—about life, love, and their relationship to art itself.

How would you describe your overall aesthetic?
I like to make people look hard and think—a lot.  I also like to make things that have the appearance of convention but are in fact far from it. Sort of similar to how I look Asian, but I’m not really at all.

I know that you work in whatever medium best suits the message you’re trying to convey.  Which is your favorite?
Well, I don’t weld (yet), though I’ve just ordered a soldering iron.  My favorite mediums are the ones I haven’t worked with yet—like ghosts, machine guns and rap music.

You’re also an editor at Artslant. How would you describe Artslant?
Artslant is a website devoted to listings of events and exhibitions in the art calendar.  We also review exhibitions, interview artists and other art world people, and curate one show a year that highlights the best and breadth of our artists’ network, which anyone can join. We cater to everyone from the Kincaid enthusiast to museum snob-bots. We’re kind of cool but we also don’t try too hard.

What inspired your piece, Library, and how was this piece realized? 
Several years ago, I decided to write the entirety of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time word for word on grains of rice – about 1.5 million words. I don’t remember how I initially thought of it. Maybe it was just something meditative to do. The intent is to house all the grains of my “translation” in a single, giant hourglass, where the rice kernels replace grains of sand. This project will take at least a few more years to complete. In the meantime, I decided to do smaller versions of this project by writing singular chapters or complete texts from shorter works, usually of books in my own library. A collector friend subsequently commissioned me to do the first chapters of his seven favorite books, and that’s how the project’s evolved. I write using a very fine point technical pen, without a magnifying glass.

What was it like to be a contestant on Bravo’s reality show, Work of Art: The Next Great Artist?
Contrary to what most people think, I had a great time on the show. Work of Art made me appreciate the manipulative and distorting power of television. There was so much recorded information that Bravo could have told any story they wanted. Unfortunately, their selection of judges, mentors and artists should have been a bit more vetted. The only thing that surprised me on the show was how the judges became complete caricatures of themselves. I was glad I did the show, though—because experience trumps passiveness and whining —but I would not do it again knowing what I know now. I have to admit I like the silly little timed projects, but they can’t be taken too seriously nor can the show properly represent the art world and creative process of an artist.

How did your piece, All You Need is Love come about?
All You Need Is Love is a crazy real-time, real world matchmaking game that takes place simultaneously in two spaces—one restaurant and one gallery connected by a live video feed—with dinner guests in both locations and everyone partaking in the same meal. It explores the dating mores of the city that it takes place in while structured on Romeo and Juliet meets Dan Brown and Marcel Duchamp, with a little Stephen Merritt thrown in for good measure. Using every medium conceivable, the intent of All You Need Is Love is to miscommunicate as much as possible while attempting to uncross the stars and still make a love connection between two people. All the bachelors and bachelorettes are chosen from real applicants.

Your work is so varied; have you always been comfortable working across such a broad range of media?
I was never a fast enough typist to be a hacker, so I’ve had to make do being creative as an artist. When I first went to college, I was triple majoring in engineering, business and art. I fell asleep too often in the former two, so I dropped them. I guess I get bored too easily with ideas and have to keep stimulated by doing and trying too many things.

How did the Metaphysical GPS iPhone app come about and how is it used?
Metaphysical GPS is a project I collaborated on with Christopher K. Ho.  Chris was living in this house in Telluride that was covered entirely in license plates, and we chose to do something based on this locale and aesthetic. Basically it’s a dumbed-down GPS that counters how we are so obsessed now with always locating ourselves and how we’ve become our own Big Brothers. Instead of giving coordinates or directions, Metaphysical GPS simply reaffirms our basic existence via over 250 flying license plates that we’ve designed (each one is a different iteration of “U R Here”). However, at one secret location in the world, if you turn on the app and happen to be “there,” something special will happen.

I know you’re doing an installation for the AHAlife loft. What can we expect?
I’m probably just going to show an array of works, to give people a sense of all the different things I do and let them try to figure out how these things fit in with one another. I’m curating a show in Miami next week, so my thoughts are absorbed with that at the moment. But for the loft, I’d love to have some element of audience interaction. Ask me again next week.