Artist Interview pt.2

Artist: Quang Tran

Exhibition: Afterburn Sculpture

Media: Ceramics, Installation 

Gallery: LBSU School of Art, Gatov West, Gatov East

Website: N/A

Instagram: N/A

The artist that I decided to interview for this essay was Quang Tran who was just one of the artists who contributed to the Afterborn gallery as the gallery was a group exhibition and he happened to be there when I went to go interview him on a Wednesday. Quang is from Santa Ana California and has recently transferred from a community college named “ Santa Ana Community College” where he got his AA degree. He is an undergraduate student here at Cal State Long Beach that is majoring in Sculpture Art and is trying to focus on creating sculptures that represent whats going on in his mind as a reflection of society while he is attending the school of art. This is Quang’s third year of schooling as he has completed two years in Santa Ana and has started her third-year last semester while trying to settle into the new school atmosphere he has his mind set on graduating from CSULB with a BFA in School of Art Sculpture Program

The piece of art that Quang presented to me was his very own and the way it came off on me was strange, unique, meaningful, and very detailed as the girl looked very real with Quang putting much work into the face plus the rags that she wore to make her stand out. The piece had a metal chair that was holding the little girl up as she was standing on it and the chair for some odd reason was bigger than the girl. On the other hand, the girl that Quang was trying to sculpt was a white little girl who had grey hair and gray eyes with a gray raggedy shirt on top of her that reached all the way down to her knees plus the rags were hiding her hands as well. What two things that the sculpture tried saying was if this girl greets you after have died or when you are about to die from the pain and suffering that you are feeling because of the people that are hurting you. The second one was if this girl was the one that was going to get killed, or possibly explain the whole process of how your body feels when you are just in constant pain not being able to feel anything else.

The sculpture that the artist Quang made was for an assignment that the students had to make something resembling pain and discomfort that your body feels when it is stuck inside of your mind. His thought-process for his sculpture was to depict how at a young age there is no pain for young children as kids do not really feel as much pain as adults do so he wanted to create something signified that a child had no pain but only innocents. Quang’s goal since he was going to be at the beginning of the gallery was to show what innocents we have before walking into the cruel world that is full of pain as we grew up to be adults which are constantly shown throughout the entire galley. His other goal was to try to make it normal as possible for the viewer as most sculptures in the gallery were very harsh so his sculpture in a way was to settle the viewer in and to show them what pure innocents is. He successfully does this as he shows a little girl that looks like she knows nothing of the world nor its pain as she just stares into what’s to come into her life.

What I got out of this sculpture was that the world is full of pain and full of hurt people that continue to live with pain that is hurting them but children do not feel nor see this pain as they only stare at it wondering what it is since they only know innocents. Quang assignment was to show something that represented pain or discomfort and in a way, he did that with a sculpture that did not look disturbing at all but with a sculpture that reminded us of all that pain and discomfort, we feel now as an adult compared to when we were just kids. This sculpture really just shows us how lost and how much pain we are as humans since we keep so much of our pain inside instead of addressing it or confronting it as we should do but society says no to that. Quang really got me to think about how much stuff I hold in as an adult in today’s world and how much pain I have been through but in a way reminded me of how great and innocent my childhood a couple of years ago. This is exactly how I felt when I saw this sculpture in the beginning and how I still feel about it now it is just a reminder of how messed up we truly are and how we are in need of some help.