four projects at super bien! | 8.9. - 2.10.2007
Trong Gia Nguyen


READY SET SAIL!
September 8 – 15
Performances: September 14 and 15, 8:30pm (free)
Collaborating with musician/architect Jeremy Linzee (Summer Lawns/Diller, Scofidio + Renfry) and Dance Gang (Kennis Hawkins and Will Rawls), Nguyen and crew will treat the greenhouse as a departure point, lighthouse, and vessel that acts as a beacon, biosphere, and site for "collection." Channeling the author Alain de Botton (The Art of Travel) and explorers such as Alexander von Humboldt, Hannibal, and Ulysses, this installation and performance incorporate dance, music, and the entire super bien! courtyard to investigate the phenomena of journey and discovery.

 

SONIC BERLIN
September 17 – 18
Like its precursors Sonic Godiva (New York CIty) and Sonic Peekskill,
SONIC BERLIN is a site-specific "blockbuster concert" that incorporates both live bands and recorded music inside super bien!, though listeners will not be able to distinguish which is which. Furthermore, the audience will only hear the music and not be able to see the performers inside. Covered with a special one-way mirror glass, the musicians will be able to see out at the viewers but not vice-versa, thus imparting a feeling of disatisfaction and negation to the experience. The greenhouse will act as a public jam space for musicians, who are invited to come play a set as they please.

 

GIRLS OF THE THIRD SITU8IONIST INTERNATIONAL SUMMIT (G3SIS)
September 20 – 25
As part of the 2007 Conflux Festival in Brooklyn, Nguyen is organizing
on September 16 at NGC Gallery the G3SIS, a closed-door meeting of
eight women artists and curators who have been invited and challenged
to solve all the world's major economic, socio-political, and environmental problems in one day. No public will witness the event in New York. However, the summit in its entirety, and the group's findings, will be broadcasted as a radio transmission to super bien!.
Nguyen is transforming the greenhouse into a simple mid-20th century living room, where viewers can simply come in, sit down, and travel back in time with technology by listening to what sounds like a radio show from the 1940s, a la Orson Welles.

 

HUMANITARIANS NOT HEROES
September 28 – October 2 (as part of Berliner Kunstsalon)
A site-specific installation of Nguyen's "artist-as-company" project.
The selection is a series of works that relate to some vague concept
of Time, including Days of the Week Paintings. The artist's "configuration" of Time thus alludes to its containment and cultivation - as "natural" to a greenhouse. Initiated in 2002 and established as a legitimate business, HNH markets one type of product a year intended for wide consumption and distribution.
The project intersects art, fashion, design, and socio-politics. Examining the
valuation of objects whose complex functions follow simple form, HNH's
mission operates at the perimeters where art and capitalism converge.

 

Trong G. Nguyen is an artist and curator based in New York. He has exhibited nationally and internationally in both solo and group exhibitions, including "Sequences 2006" (Iceland), "9th Havana Biennial" (Cuba), and "Performa 05" (New York). Two years ago he established New General Catalog, a Brooklyn exhibition space devoted to the whims of the contemporary. Nguyen also serves on the Fashion in Film Festival advisory board and has guest-lectured at Columbia University, New York University, Icelandic Art Academy, and Catalyst Foundation. He has received grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Harvestworks Digital Media Center, Bronx Museum of the Arts, and Puffin Foundation. He is currently writing a "lost chapter" to "The Da Vinci Code" based on the secret love life of Marcel Duchamp.
www.cameandwent.com