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Past and Future:
Artist Reception: July 6 (First Friday Art Walk) 5 - 8 PM
Daniel Kany Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of cast glass and fabricated steel sculptures by Trinh Nguyen. Born in Vietnam, the Brooklyn-based artist—a graduate of the Parsons School of Design— works largely at UrbanGlass, New York City’s premier glass facility.
Nguyen works with forms that appear, at first, to be modular in the tradition of Minimalism. With closer observation, the work's organic logic becomes more apparent and ultimately predominant. Rather than announcing itself, the organic element comes quietly as a feeling and the works slowly come alive. A set of 12 vertically-set wall panels might read as superficially symmetrical, but closer inspection reveals differing rhythms in the glass, variation in finish of the steel and the artist’s confidently loose touch.
Nguyen’s innovative kiln-casting techniques allow him to employ a relatively broad set of textures within the glass components. Ranging from crystalline to milky-opaque, the artist’s glass elements are set among fabricated steel segments of the same size and shape. At times, the reflective and textural qualities of the two materials stand far apart and at other times appear surprisingly similar. Through such proximity and the range in the glass itself, Nguyen establishes a broad and rather deep consideration of glass and its abilities to articulate its material and immaterial qualities. His use of steel is similarly thoughtful and somehow finds a way to reference both the intimacy of jewelry and the immovably powerful strength of industrial metal.
"I think of the term ‘system’ as a complex group of components coming together to form a greater whole,” explains Nguyen. “Think of human biology: the circular or nervous systems, and so on. The relationship of the steel and glass in this sense is not based on difference: the two elements intertwine with each other to support and echo the form of the other. My use of positive and negative space in general follows this thread as well.”
Nguyen’s piece “Shackles” is a pair of ¾ arcs of glass and steel segments that gesture up from a pedestal and away from each other. The glass is essentially colorless and, through its internal textures and surface finish, matches the hand-forged steel in its rawness. Sculpturally, the work is an extremely complex set of gestures, rhythms, positive and negative spaces. Nguyen’s aesthetic counters and controls the complexity through a cool and rational sensibility that infers a clarity and uniformity. Unlike most reductive sculpture that employs a Minimalist vocabulary, the New York artist’s work emanates a sense of legibility, reference and even metaphor. Consequently, the work has an extremely refined architectural clarity while exuding a sense of approachable content.
For more information and publication-quality images, please contact Daniel Kany.
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