La Patinoire Royale / Galerie Valérie Bach is pleased to present This House Is Falling Upwards through a Hole in (do) China, Trong Gia Nguyen’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. Based in Vietnam, the artist will be showing recent sculptural and 2D works that are objects defined by elements of obstruction. While possessing allure on the surface, they allude to an underbelly of societal decline. The artist’s de-construction of the “American dream” is superimposed over an equally elegiac Vietnamese landscape.

In Ho Chi Minh City, or Saigon as the locals call it, the rapid economic growth has led to thoughtless development projects that are plainly eroding the architectural and social fabric that give the city its quickly fading charm. This House Is Falling Upwards through a Hole in (do) China is built around various projects that were made since 2015, when the artist relocated from New York to his city of birth. The viewer is presented with a disjointed construction site of a home, with windows, walls, a door, fence, and mailbox.

One series of windows replicate the patterned iron gates that adorn old colonial homes, except these are made from wood, lending them a frail quality. They depict fragmented, barely noticeable traces of scenes both idyllic and dark, from sunsets to the Killing Fields.