VietNamNet Bridge – The floor is made of broken mirror pieces reflecting every object and person on, above and beside it. Paintings lean against the wall. Photographs are hung so high that viewers have to stand on tip-toe to see them.

Time to reflect: Visitors stand on the exhibition's floor made of broken mirror pieces at HCM City's San Art Gallery. — VNS Photo Sunny Rose

It is the brainchild of Phong Bui, an artist, writer, and independent curator from the US, who this way seeks to explore how audiences interact with works of art, according to the gallery.

In a release it said Bui has worked with several local artists to transform "the gallery space of San Art into a new spatial experience".

"Paintings, photographs, drawings, video, poetry, music by local artists and much more would be featured, though perhaps not displayed in the typical conventional way you may expect.

"Paintings ordinarily hung on the wall may be found leaning on the floor, while photographs usually framed and placed at eye level may be placed up high.

"Other works may be hung one on top of the other in a new kind of sculpture. These are all deliberate gestures by Phong Bui who is interested in the social interactions between art and audience and how they encounter an art experience."

Bui said: "Artistic practice plays with ideas of space, both physical and textual, often challenging how choosing to interact with principles of perspective."

One visitor, a Frenchman, told Viet Nam News, "... very interesting collection".

An art student said: "I don't know what the artist wants to say – maybe about environmental pollution with a lot of solid waste. Maybe about history. Maybe … it is modern life."

The gallery's website quotes Bui as saying: "Like artist Joseph Beuys before me, I'm interested in the idea of ‘social sculpture', which is motivated by the utopian belief in the potential of art to transform society.

"Thereby, upon the invitation of San Art, I thought of nothing else but my dream of a social organism as a work of art that could perhaps manifest as a token of my homage to the community of creative individuals on my very first trip to Viet Nam since 1980."

Bui, a Hue native, is based in New York.

Two of his installations won the 2006 Award in Art from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Eric Isenbeurger Annual Prize for Installation from the National Academy Museum. He has won an Arcadia Traveling Fellowship, a Hobenberg Traveling Fellowship, and a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Fellowship.

His works have featured at numerous solo and group exhibitions in the US, China, Greece, and Italy.

From 2007 to 2009 he was curatorial adviser at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center/Museum of Modern Art, New York.

He is the co-founder, editor, and publisher of the monthly publication The Brooklyn Rail, which offers critical perspectives on arts, politics, and culture in New York City and beyond, as well as The Brooklyn Rail/Black Square Editions, a publishing venture that focuses on experimental poetry, fiction, artists' writings, interviews with artists, and art criticism.

The exhibition at San Art, 3 Me Linh, Binh Thanh District, closes on June 30.

VietNamNet/Viet Nam News