Vietnamese American artist, Christine Nguyen, creates her art like a scientific laboratory of chimerical fantastical worlds lost between the deep sea and the cosmos. Using combinations of painting, drawing and growing salt crystals on transparent sheets she creates vibrant large murals by way of a camera-less process of photography. A unique process likened to a scientific microscope’s glass slide that meld together with color result in a multidimensional photo-based work that is vibrant with color and movement. Her works almost sway to and fro with tidal forces. The murals blanket the walls of her large installations. 10 Chancery Lane Gallery will relaunch the newly renovated Central gallery with Christine Nguyen debut exhibition of large mural works and installation work of crystallized salt.
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Artist’s Statement:
“My work draws upon the imagery of science, but it is not limited to technologies of the present. It imagines that the depths of the ocean reach into outer space, that through an organic prism, vision can fluctuate between the micro- and macroscopic. I have been developing a personal cosmology in which commonalities among species, forms, and environment become visible and expressive, suggesting past narratives and possible futures. My recent work has been “p¬hoto-based”, in that it combines drawing and photographic processes. “Negatives” are drawn on layers of Mylar, which are projected onto light-sensitive paper. The paper is developed in a color processor, creating a camera-less, photographic image. In addition to watercolor and ink, I use materials such as saltwater, seaweed, coral, minerals, and crystals to manipulate the “negative” and the print. The total process is similar to that of making a photogram.”
The subtle way in which Nguyen layers imagery with such precision result in crystals of life-like forms that mimic nature but are pure invention. The act of exploring the varied underwater life forms of the natural microscopic world is of key interest to Christine Nguyen. As a child, the ocean was her family’s livelihood, her father a local commercial fisherman who pulled different kinds of sea life for trade. The mythic worlds she creates paint a mystic utopia limned with soft silhouettes of glowing light.
Christine Nguyen is a young Vietnamese American artist with a prolific exhibition history. She has held ten solo exhibitions in the US, notably at the UCLA Hammer Museum, LA; and the Huntington Beach Museum of Art ‘Rock, Paper, Salt’ 2010.
Text courtesy 10 Chancery Lane Gallery.
