|
Indepth Arts News:
"Evolution in form: Sculptures by Darlene Nguyen-Ely"
2001-02-08 until 2001-04-10
Charleston Heights Arts Center
Las Vegas, NV,
USA United States of America
You won't find Seattle-based artist Darlene Nguyen-Ely commenting on any
pressing social issues of
modern life, or pontificating on the human condition in general. Her
work is quiet and introverted.
Less preoccupied with the affairs of the outside world, the sculptures
in Darlene's exhibition,
Evolution in Form, is all about drawing the viewer's eye in for a closer
look.
On display at Charleston Heights Arts Center, 800 S. Brush Street , Las
Vegas, Nevada from
February 8 thru April 10, 2001, the pieces's sensual and curvy surfaces
sometimes feel cold and remote
despite their aesthetically pleasing arrangement of forms. But the work
doesn't just rest on a formal idea
of icy, detached beauty. Each piece occupies its specific space as if
it were marking the territory of an
absent human presence. Using everything from wood to composite resin
and acrylic paints, Nguyen-Ely
builds up her shapes with a smooth, sleek surfaces, geometrically
precise details, and machine
and biologically-inspired forms that symbolized journeys.
Within her emphasis on formalism, Nguyen-Ely deals with a self-imposed,
limited range of shapes as a
method to get to the essence of her chosen abstractions. She makes a
decent argument that a contemporary
artist can still transform form into content. Here, part of the work's
sensory pleasure is also largely derived
from the numerous ways her sculptures interpret a finite series of
curves, and how they relate to one another
when seen as a group.
Nguyen-Ely's art, however, isn't terribly challenging on a conceptual
level. Observing the way light
reflects and bounces off the lovely and delicately refined surfaces and
movements of her sculptures is pretty
much all that you get in the end. It entertains the eye without really
moving the heart.
But what keeps the work from being a purely formal exercise is the
unspoken question the artist seems to
be asking herself with each piece: How can one work and re-work an
essentially simple shape and make it
seem simultaneously familiar and newNULL And it is a teasing question that
Nguyen-Ely artistry has yet to
exhaust with this particular body of work.
by Neil Kendricks
(Neil Kendricks is an artist, writer, photographer and filmmaker based
in San Diego)
IMAGE:
Journey # 82: Untitled, 2000,
21 h x 24 w x 14 d,
wall mounted,
wood/collage/acrylic
Related Links:
| | 
|
