This week, 38-year-old artist Trong Nguyen, a graduate of the University of South Florida's Master of Fine Arts program, joins the ranks of reality television stars with the launch on Bravo of Work of Art: the Next Great Artist. The competition-based show — a Top Chef or Project Runway for visual artists — pits participants against each other to win a grand prize of $100,000 in cash and a solo exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum in New York.
Like its precursors, Work of Art gives contestants challenges (like crafting an artwork out of trash), and their work gets appraised by a trio of big-name judges — gallery owners Bill Powers and Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn and art critic Jerry Saltz. There's also a host-babe, ex-model China Chow, and an impeccably mannered mentor, Swiss auctioneer Simon de Pury. (He's the series' Tim Gunn.) During a press conference last week, Chow, Powers and de Pury waxed enthusiastic about the potential of reality television to educate viewers about contemporary artmaking and to offer artists a democratic avenue to success.
"We're in a different world than we were ten years ago, and I think that this is actually a valid way of finding talent these days," Chow said.
For Nguyen, who has lived in Brooklyn since he graduated from USF in 1998, the show offers not so much a chance to be "discovered" — his track record of exhibitions and publications proves he's no neophyte — as a new medium for artistic exploration. When I caught up with him on the phone last week, Nguyen — who is, of course, prohibited from discussing specifics about the Bravo series — told me about some of his recent projects, including an iPhone app that satirizes the GPS system by proclaiming "U R Here" to users, and plans for exhibitions in London and New York, including a video installation that investigates the experience of reality television.
Creative Loafing: In a nutshell, what have you been up to since you graduated from USF's MFA program?
Trong Nguyen: I've been up to a lot. When I was in graduate school at USF, I was doing my art stuff and, towards the end of my studies, I was starting to curate as well. So, when I first moved to New York, I started work at an art gallery …and then became an independent curator. I'm still doing that, actually, and right now by daytime I'm also an editor at Artslant, an online art [publication] that has reviews and gallery listings and interviews with artists.
Can you tell me about some of the work that you do in different media?
I do literally everything. This project that I just completed was an iPhone application. I also have done web-based performance projects, sculpture — indoor, outdoor. I've done painting — my degree is in painting. I do drawing, photography, installation. … [One project] is a giant wedding cake, essentially, that is almost four feet tall, made completely out of acrylic paint. … It has a sword…pushed into the top of it, like King Arthur. So, all sorts of crazy projects.
What will you be doing on the night that the show airs?
I decided, because I'm one of those people who hates listening to myself and watching myself, I've decided I'm not even going to watch it.
Really?!
Yeah. I may watch it later on, but I won't watch it as it immediately airs. I'm the kind of person who likes to process previous projects that I've worked on, and I kind of consider the show a project. … After experiencing the idea of reality TV, it makes me want to reconsider reality TV. And so, actually, one of the things I'm doing for [an upcoming exhibit on] Governor's Island [in New York] is that I'm recording watching parties of the TV show, where it's from the perspective of the TV looking onto the viewer and recording the viewer. I'm showing just the viewers watching the episodes as a series in itself on the island, where people can only view it if they're on the island. So, when each episode airs, I'll record the people viewing it and then show that episode on the island. It will be a way to see the show in a completely different light with viewers who are experiencing it for the first time and critiquing it spontaneously as well. That will be called "Only Off Bravo," because Bravo's slogan is "Only On Bravo."
Are you ready to become a celebrity, in the way that people on reality TV inevitably become known and recognizable?
It's funny in New York, you know, because the art world in New York is so small, and everyone knows everyone. To a certain degree, I've been up here for ten years, so I know a lot of people in the art world, a lot of people in the art world know me already. So, it's not such a big deal in New York City. It's a big deal, you know, for the clerk in my neighborhood bodega, right? So it's more of a funny neighborhood thing. … I'll try to make the neighborhood proud.
It's interesting to hear you say that because I sat in on a conference call, the Bravo official conference call, and one of the things a couple of the judges discussed was how exciting it was that artists could promote themselves through reality TV these days. In a way, it sounds like you're saying you don't really need to do that because you already exist in [the New York art] community.
What made me really excited to do the show in the end was deciding that, in every which way, it wasn't going to affect me one way or the other in my career as an artist. … I think the title is a little bit silly, actually, to call it "The Next Great Artist." For instance, another artist [on the show] said, it should have just been called "Another Great Artist," because some of us on the show are already established. It's more for mass America than anything else. For me, it becomes just another medium, really. Reality TV becomes another medium, and you kind of have to do it just to do it.
This article appears in Jun 10-16, 2010.