Tran Truong: Portals

Exhibition Dates: January 18 – February 15, 2025

Closing Reception: Friday, February 14, 6 - 9 pm

839 is pleased to announce “Portals,” a solo exhibition of paintings by Tran Truong. This exhibition brings together nearly fifteen years of Truong’s practice, including early trompe l'oeil pieces alongside more recent abstract depictions of interior and intimate spaces. 

Truong’s 2010 paintings depict domestic objects such as doors and window blinds rendered in actual size, employing a trompe l'oeil technique. In “Door,” 2010, the subtle interplay of light and shadow enhances the realism of an apparent front door’s ornamental woodwork. The effect is intensified by the artist’s insertion of a readymade peephole embedded in the surface, facing outward toward the viewer as if the piece is looking back at its audience. The painting rests directly on the floor, leaning back against the wall behind it, heightening its status as an object. 

In a more recent interpretation of the subject, “Doors,” 2022, offers an expressive field of dark brown brushstrokes delineating two rectilinear door shapes and the hallway wall they share. Behind each door, vibrant yellow strips of paint indicate a warm, glowing light–perhaps hinting at an offscreen gathering of friends or family. 

Elsewhere, in “Untitled (Bra),” 2019, Truong utilizes a heavily reductive formal approach to capture an up-close image of a woman’s chest, with her top parted to frame her torso and her breasts implied beneath two black arches. In this work as in others, the artist uses subtle tonalities and spare shapes to conjure slight disruptions, the sensation of nostalgia, and the kind of after-imagery that accompanies a remembrance of places and people from the past. 

Tran Truong (b. Janesville, Wisconsin) received a BA from the University of California, Los Angeles and an MFA from Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, Bard College. She has exhibited in Los Angeles at Artist Curated Projects, Sidecar, La Loma Projects, Monte Vista Projects, Night Gallery, Queens, Cirrus, Pieter Performance Space, High Energy Constructs, and Circus of Books. She has also exhibited at As Is Exhibitions (Oakland), Dommer & Byars Gallery (San Francisco), Hel Gallery (New York), and Co-Lab (Copenhagen). Truong lives and works in Los Angeles.

For images and inquiries: info@839gallery.com

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@839gallery

839 N. Cherokee Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90038

Open Saturdays, 12 - 6 pm and by appointment

Accessibility and Parking: For the closing reception, we recommend public transit or parking in front of Bancroft Middle School on Las Palmas Ave., a short walk from the gallery. Please note that the gallery has a porch with four steps.

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January 17, 2025: We feel immense sorrow for the devastating losses suffered by so many in the wake of the wildfires that have swept through the Los Angeles region. Our hearts go out to everyone affected, and we are inspired by the remarkable compassion and collective action we’ve witnessed in the wake of this tragedy.

In solidarity with those displaced by the fires, the gallery and the artist are committing 20% of all sales from the exhibition to the Los Angeles Tenants Union (LATU) and the Pasadena Tenants Union (PTU) equally. These grassroots organizations have been on the frontlines of the tenants’ rights and affordable housing movements in our region for over a decade. These unions have been instrumental in advocating for local rent control, just-cause eviction protections, and now, a rent freeze and eviction moratorium in the wake of the ongoing wildfires crisis.

Los Angeles’s housing woes, exacerbated by these fires and the insatiable greed of landlords, has led to alarming price gouges on rental housing, as high as 124%. Even before this disaster, over half of Los Angeles renters were considered rent-burdened, spending more than 30% of their income on housing. The current situation only intensifies this struggle. To report possible instances of price gouging on rental housing with Los Angeles County click here, and with the California State Attorney General’s Office click here. If you or someone you know has been the victim of rent gouging, you can also click here to add to the database of LA-area rent gouging incidents.