COURTESY PULSE MIAMI BEACH
The Pulse Contemporary Art Fair announced today that Brooklyn- and Ho Chi Minh City–based artist Trong Gia Nguyen has won the fair’s 2015 Miami Beach Pulse Prize. Nguyen’s work was brought to the fair by mc2gallery, which is based in Milan.
At Pulse, Nguyen showed an installation in which viewers entered through a saloon door cut in the shape of a lynched man’s silhouette. Once inside, viewers saw various sculptures by Nguyen, one of which was a dartboard cut to look like a leaping person. In a statement, Nguyen, who received $2,500 as part of the prize, called the work “a wrestling match in which the viewer can never win.”
The jurors for this year’s prize were Lucas Museum of Narrative Art director Don Baciagalupi, Art Production Fund executive director Casey Fremont, Cultured editor-in-chief Sarah Harrelson, and NYU Department of Photography and Imaging chair Deborah Willis. Nguyen’s work, which was chosen out of a pool of 17 nominated booths, will remain on view at Pulse Miami Beach through December 5.