The Garden
September 6 – October 18, 2008
Reception for the Artist: Saturday, September 6, 6 – 9 pm
Los Angeles, CA - Sam Lee Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition entitled The Garden by Pipo Nguyen-duy. The show opens September 6 and closes October 18; the gallery will host a reception for the artist on Saturday, September 6, 6 – 9 p.m. The Garden marks Nguyen-duy’s second solo exhibition at Sam Lee Gallery.
Pipo Nguyen-duy’s The Garden, a follow-up to his acclaimed East of Eden series,is a photographic project that explores the North American landscape as the Garden of Eden and reframes it from a post-September 11th perspective. The photographs depict approximately thirty abandoned greenhouses that have withered and flourished in their states of neglect. The dilapidated structures address our anxieties regarding destruction and the subsequent, requisite abandonment of destructed spaces. Yet, in its abandoned state, the post-utopic greenhouse proves to be another sort of Eden, overgrown and wild with fertility. Here, the Garden of Eden is indeed an indicator of expulsion and abandonment, but it is also an agent of rebirth and new life.
Photographed over the course of five years, The Garden is a practice in observation and documentation. The Garden is a dedicated scientist, charting changes in weather, growth and the environments’ evolution. In regards to execution, Nguyen-duy keeps the height of his tripod consistent and captures his images from the same vantage point. This allows him to document occurring changes in the greenhouses in respects to a constant variable.
Nguyen-duy, born in Hue, Vietnam in 1962, received a master’s degree of fine arts in photography from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque in 1998. The artist lives in Ashland, Oregon, and teaches at Oberlin College, in Oberlin, Ohio, where he is associate professor of photography. His work has been shown internationally, with recent exhibitions at the Light Work Gallery in New York, the Faaborg Museum in Denmark, and the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego.
Digital images are available for press purposes. Please email (info@samleegallery.com) for reproduction requests.
Sam Lee Gallery is located at 990 N. Hill Street #190, Los Angeles, CA 90012, Phone 323-227-0275, Facsimile 323-227-0256. Gallery hours are Tuesday to Saturday, 12 to 6 pm. For detailed information, please visit the gallery’s website, www.samleegallery.com.