DOING LINES: PAUL DE GUZMAN AND CHRISTIAN NGUYEN

November 19 – December 31, 2005 (SHOW HAS BEEN EXTENDED UNTIL JANUARY 30, 2006)

New General Catalog 224 presents Doing Lines, an exhibition of works by Paul de Guzman and Christian Nguyen. In separate mediums, both artists use elemental line to explore the architecture of art, language, design, myth, and monument. De Guzman’s “gutted windows” into the interior structures of books investigate the portability of architecture and the permanence of language, while Nguyen’s drawings on raw canvas lead the viewer through rooms based on the symbolic Tower of Babel, attempting to locate an aesthetic ideal within the previously unified, utopian, and monolithic state before multiculturalism and linguistic diversity arose.

Paul de Guzman’s work inhabits a transient space. “The artist inserts himself into the canonical works of contemporary design and criticism by cutting sections from architecture books and anthologies which have become authorities on meaning and interpretation” (Cay Sophie Rabinowitz). His investigations into art, language, architecture and design interrupt and debunk our basic and tradition-bound understanding of these disciplines, and reveals observations that may not be readily apparent.

As a mythological and a monumental civic project, Christian Nguyen’s drawings of the Tower of Babel combine elements from other ancient structures such as the Pyramids, the Ziggurats of Iraq, the temples of Greece, as well as fictional and art historical spaces such as those described by Borges or da Vinci. The drawings combine these and various archetypes of architecture to find an aesthetic ideal. This reductive process focuses on the emotional and psychological effect of space, and in seeking this essence to evoke a place that is autonomous, universal and conscious. The Tower of Babel drawings are part of a larger body of work that examines the concept of monuments and the relationship between sacred and corporate space.

Paul de Guzman was born (1965) in Manila, The Philippines where he studied Engineering. He immigrated to Canada in 1986 and currently lives and works in Vancouver. He has exhibited internationally at The Vancouver Art Gallery (Vancouver, Canada), Galerie Marcus Richter (Berlin, Germany), Galerie Dominique Fiat (Paris, France), apexart (New York, USA), Transit – aktuele kunst (Mechelen, Belgium), Foreman Art Gallery at Bishop’s University (Lennoxville, Quebec), and Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto, Canada).

Christian Nguyen (b. 1968, Saigon) is a practicing artist based in New York City. He received a B.F.A at The Cooper Union School of Art (1990) and M.F.A at Hunter College (2000). Most recently, he was a resident at the Marie Walsh Sharpe Space Program. Nguyen has exhibited works in varying media at Socrates Sculpture Park, Plane Space, White Columns, Momenta Art, PH Gallery, and Cuchifritos.

For more information and images, please contact 917-687-9747.
Gallery Hours: Friday-Sunday, 12-6pm and by appointment.