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“Spasmicosmics”: works by Christine Nguyen

January 29 – April 8, 2005
Reception event: Saturday, January 29, 6-8pm
1639 18th Street, Santa Monica

Santa Monica, CA – 18th Street Arts Center presents “Spasmicosmics,” works by Christine Nguyen, curated by Jamie Greenberg, January 29 – April 8, 2005 at 18th Street Arts Center, 1639 18th Street, Santa Monica. The reception will be Saturday, January 29, 6-8pm. This is the first show in the 2005 season of Spontaneous Combustion, an exhibition series dedicated to emerging LA artists. The show opens and runs simultaneously with “Quiet Time,” curated by Barbara Drucker, Chair of the UCLA Art Department. Both exhibitions are funded by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Intricate and expansive, the work of Christine Nguyen creates worlds of fantasy rooted in nature and compounded by her inventive imagination. Layers of translucent mylar drawings, impressionistic renderings of trees and oceans are blended with detailed half-alien half-organic creatures. These creatures, for which Nguyen has begun to compose a taxonomy, represent personal narratives, and serve as metaphors for human emotion and social interaction. Bird-like figures hold hands in a circle, floating amid a sky of white cellular structures in the six by twenty foot Spasmicosmic Milk Bubbles, while animated swimming eyeballs weep and play in Water Spirits. The vast and complex background imagery is based on a conceptual investigation of societal infrastructure; systems of transportation and technological progress that seem to parallel the expansive quality of outer space. Humor, sensitivity, and color make the creatures an appealing counterpart. Viewers are pleasantly caught between the large-scale depictions of a spatial landscape and the sweet and subtle allegories of its mythical beings.

18th Street programs are supported by the James Irvine Foundation, California Community Foundation, Trust for Mutual Understanding, National Endowmwnt for the Arts, Santa Monica City Cultural Affairs Division, L.A. County Arts Commission, National Endowment for the Arts, Dana Foundation, J. Paul Getty Grant Program, and others.

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