Through the work, which brought together colorful rubber flowers, topographical mushrooms, a street vendor's cart stacked with tutti-frutti pompons, plush cushion creatures, and exquisitely executed photographic work into a cornucopia of child-like pop and tongue-in-cheek kitsch, Chung aimed to capture her "complex feeling of love, anxiety and overwhelming visual stimulation" that arise out of the urban experience of Ho Chi Minh City.

Momentum was Chung's first exhibition in this city. It is also probably the first time that an exhibition of Pop Abstraction has been seen here, and so her work was an important introduction of this aesthetic to local viewers. The aesthetic that has characterized Chung's work since the late 1990s, particularly due to the influence the arts scene in L.A. at that time. After completing her Master of Fine Arts degree, Chung decided to head over to Vietnam. The move was prompted by her desire to re-connect with Saigon, with which she was familiar from her childhood and more recent visits, and to see how this new urban environment would affect her work.

Chung's fascination with Saigon has resulted in a range of art projects that have culminated in Momentum. The work is aptly named. As Chung states, "it captures the feeling of standing on a corner and seeing the blurred motion of thousands of moving objects on the streets. It also reflects people's experiences of shapes and colors while driving past advertising billboards and consumer goods - abstract colors bombard the retina as shapes bleed into the consciousness with delight and giddiness as one remembers experiencing childhood." One of her biggest sources of inspiration living in Saigon has been the street vendors and the funky carts that they wheel around the city. "Their strength motivates me, and I really miss that kind of thing when I go back to L.A. They are the life of the city."

Whether as residents or visitors to Ho Chi Minh City, one can't help but be amazed at the frenzy of energy in the place. Every driver on the road seems to be possessed by his own sense of urgency, and will not budge an inch to let another in. In almost every public space one encounters an onslaught of jostling people - whether at the supermarket, outside school buildings, or at post office counters. And who can forget the feeling of visual extravaganza that streams past the windows on taxi rides from the airport into town, particularly after one has been out of Vietnam for some time. There are no expanses upon which one's eye can rest, just incessant activity and the infinite details of so many colors, shapes, shop signs and products thrown together. The visual language of Chung's exhibition - the intensity of colors, the clash produced by their juxtaposition and the way all of these jostle for our attention - skillfully express the visual and sensory experience of being in Ho Chi Minh City.

Inevitably, an overload of stimuli can become an irritant. This is a city with very few spots of peace. They do exist, and I think each one of us hunts one out for ourselves. Entering mai's GALLERY, one is first greeted by Chung's central piece, Plastic Fantastic, a neat garden of mulit-colored rubber flowers, that almost seem to be waving cheerfully at the viewer. The installation then unfolds to reveal sculptural floor pieces, photographic works on the side walls, and a tantalizing food cart waiting in the rear of the gallery. After the initial impact of color and form, then cognition and humor, an uncanny sense of silence and stillness came over me. Chung explains this as related to our sense of movement as we rush past things on the motorbike, while in fact, those things are just sitting there. One often wonders why Saigonese are always in such a hurry. Whatever they are rushing for will still be there even if they arrive a few minutes later. In other words, this is all motion for motion's sake - momentum. For me, Chung's large beanbag sculptures, which she has titled Interlude, signify the points of peace and calm amidst all the commotion. As objects they are rather oddly shaped floor cushions. As representations, their organic, animal-like form suggests a kind of beached sea creature. I felt an overwhelming urge to sink into one and forget about all that was going on in the streets outside. Shortcuts to Bliss, one of the photographic works in the exhibition, which images Chung snuggling one of these sculptures, indicates that my response is not far off track.

Like all good artwork, Momentum operates on several levels of meaning. It also functions as an oblique reference to Vietnamese popular culture through the flowers and stuffed animals, which are an allusion to the gifts wild teenage fans give to pop stars during the interludes at concerts. In a sense, the stuffed toys for sale in shops and street stalls all over the city only come to life once they take on such an emotive role.

But while they are cute, Chung's stuffed creatures are also disturbing - eyeless, faceless, and with truncated limbs. Indeed, the whole installation seems to point at something a tad off kilter, a tad surreal. The creatures are inviting - fleecy, soft, cuddly - but weird. Likewise, the flowers are giddily joyous. The colors are bright, but on second thoughts, they are too bright. The photographic works that flanked the show were hung in a variety of ways - sometimes right side up, sometimes upside down or inverted, to form odd mirror image effects. One gets a vague sense of unease in all this bright, tantalizing kiddy-land stuff, a feeling of both attraction and repulsion that is particularly poignantly expressed through the "candies" laid out on the vendor's cart. From a distance, they look very delicious, but once one realizes they are pompoms, and imagines the texture of them in one's mouth - pure disgust!

Meanwhile, the work also makes pertinent comments on the complex relationship between nature and culture in Vietnamese society. There are many references to nature - from the Interlude creatures, the flower garden and mushrooms to the 'monkey bridges' of the Mekong Delta. None of it is presented in natural materials. Even the bridge, imaged in one of the photographic works, has been replaced by upturned pink plastic buckets. This is more than simply a comment on past and present. Rather, it is a penetrating view on the way nature is synthesized and re-presented in the urban context. Nature is stylized, artificially beautiful. It is kitsch. And this keeps it safe. But while Chung's work presents us with so many of the elements of Asian kitsch, her deeply ironical way of using that kitsch in thoroughly western.

It seems to me that Tiffany Chung did indeed make the right decision in basing herself in Saigon. Momentum, a unique response from a talented artist, is very much of this city.