10 Chancery Lane Gallery of Hong Kong is proud to present Vietnamese American artist Christine Nguyen.

Vietnamese American artist, Christine Nguyen, is gaining international attention with her photogram murals that use a cameraless process of photography.  Christine creates impressive underwater fantastic worlds by both drawing on mylar sheets and growing salt crystals that she lays upon them, the result is 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.  

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.  The forms and environs in my work sometimes migrate into new pieces, establishing new systems. These systems imagine modes of transportation, communication, and regeneration. There are no waste materials in these worlds: vision is a renewable resource.  

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 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. For the young Nguyen, these life forms were surreal and fascinating in their underwater kingdom and she drew great comparison with these aquatic wonders to her ideas of outer space.

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.