Tin Vịt 6 Giờ (Six O’Clock Duck News)
Location: Vin Gallery, Vietnam
Opening date: 6 June 2025, 18.30–20.30
Duration: 7 June - 18 July 2025
Exhibition curated by Nguyễn Vũ Thiên An (Thea), under mentorship of Đỗ Tường Linh.
Vin Gallery is pleased to announce Tin Vịt 6 Giờ (Six O’Clock Duck News), a group exhibition of 6 multimedia artists, on view from 6 June through 18 July, 2025. Featuring works by Alison Nguyen, Lê Đình Chung, Lau Wai, Jack Greeley-Ward, Phạm Nguyễn Anh Tú, and Thuy T Nguyen, each work tunes into its own frequency to question the line between what is aired and what is real.
Taking its title from tin vịt–a Vietnamese slang term for fake or fabricated news–the exhibition blends satire and spectacle to explore the performative nature of media culture. “Six o’clock” refers to the traditional evening hours while also recalling Six O’Clock News (1996) by Ross McElwee, where personal anxieties collide with televised tragedies. The documentary film mirrors each artist’s interest in how media filters, distorts, and reshapes our perception of truth.
At the core of the exhibition is the 12:00 P.M. news broadcast scene in Bóng Xà Bông (2021) by Phạm Nguyễn Anh Tú, where something rigid in form with governmental authority like the noontime television program becomes a surreal stage for queer memory and self-performance. From there, the exhibition expands across mediums and sensibilities. News anchors morph into avatars, broadcasts become confessionals, and fiction slips into familiarity. The works don’t seek resolution or clarity. They lean into staged awkwardness, DIY aesthetics, deliberate glitches and visual detours that mimic the codes of mass media.
If the news was once a tool of control, here it becomes a format of play. In conversation, each artist tunes into their own frequency. Phạm Nguyễn Anh Tú and Jack Greeley-Ward remix the language of broadcast culture, using absurdist logic to destabilize dominant visual codes. While Tú conjures queer memories through a television stage, Jack’s animations turn banal imagery into scenes of collapse and resistance, asking what happens when systems break down.
Lê Đình Chung turns away from the screen toward nature, using traditional pigments and delicate gestures to puncture the surface of perception. His paintings offer quiet ruptures, suggesting that disobedience can take root in stillness.
Lau Wai's practice navigates memory and survival in a digitized world, embedding archival fragments and speculative fiction into immersive video and photographic works. His piece resists clear timelines, hinting at both loss and futurity. The impulse echoes in Andra8 by Alison Nguyen, a virtual laborer trapped in an algorithmic purgatory–always performing. The character loops through scripted gestures designed by unseen forces, exposing how agency becomes diffused in the age of surveillance and automation.
Thuy T Nguyen adds a satirical edge by recycling found Skymall imagery, where absurd consumer desires are reframed as surreal visual commentaries. Her animation layers commercial kitsch with glitchy detachment, unmasking the spectacle of capitalist longing.
Together, these works resist coherence and fixed meaning. Tin Vịt 6 Giờ (Six O’Clock Duck News) is an invitation for viewers to question where performance ends and reality begins.
Participating Artists:
Alison Nguyen, Lê Đình Chung, Lau Wai, Jack Greeley-Ward, Phạm Nguyễn Anh Tú, Thuy T Nguyen.
About the Curator:
Nguyễn Vũ Thiên An (Thea) is an emerging curator and art researcher based between New York and Hanoi, currently pursuing a BFA in Design History and Practice at Parsons School of Design, The New School. Her work explores the connections between modern and contemporary art, with a growing focus on the Vietnamese art scene and how artists translate identity into their practice. Her past experiences include assisting Judith Hughes Day Vietnamese Contemporary Fine Art and Cohart (New York) and interning at Hanoi Grapevine and Chau & Co Gallery (Hanoi), gaining insight into local art scenes and institutional practices. This summer, Thien An is staying in New York to further her curatorial training through internships at Eli Klein Gallery and Talwar Gallery.