Date/Time
Date(s) - 04/22/2022 - 05/31/2022
12:00 am
Location
Buffalo Arts Studio
Categories
Opening Reception, Friday, April 28, 2022, 5:00—8:00 pm
Part of M&T Bank 4th Friday @ Tri-Main Center
Awarded Best Exhibition, Small Gallery in Buffalo Spree’s Best of WNY 2022.
In his seminal PLUSH series, inspired by superheroes and secret identities, he created wearable sculptures as a social armor that disguised and protected the wearer while also defying usual beauty norms, body classification and giving everyone new abilities with the added appendages, tentacles, and bulbous extensions. The TURBO series took PLUSH and added team mechanics, encouraging the even more multifaceted bulbous and harlequin striped figures to unionize, using their specific custom forms to work together differently to achieve unified goals. In the performance duo VIKTOR & CHARLEY, he scaled back the numbers to focus on refugee partnerships, drawing attention to the plight of immigrants by reperforming stunts, similar to those of Laurel and Hardy or Charlie Chaplin.
Tommy Nguyen is a Vietnamese American installation artist and sculptor who builds new worlds to hypothesize possible futures. He creates environments as visual experiments of how he imagines the world can continue to evolve to all our betterment and optimal selves. Nguyen studied economics, philosophy, and history until he took his first painting class, where he was inspired by an enthusiastic George Hughes to pursue art full-time. After receiving his MFA from the University of Buffalo, Tommy moved to Queens to join Flux Factory. He has held residencies with collectives and at museums in Iceland, Finland, and Denmark and exhibits internationally. Recently, he was awarded the Sachsen-Anhalt Kunstiftung fellowship in Halle, Germany, culminating in a forthcoming show. He is currently based in Brooklyn, NY teaching at Pace University in the Art Department.
Tommy frequently collaborates with his partner artist, director, designer, and puppeteer Doug Fitch. Their shows and exhibitions have been mounted internationally, notably at the Metropolitan Art Museum, National Sawdust, Turn Park, P.S.21, The New York Philharmonic, The ElbPhilharmonie, and the Salzburg Marionetten Theatre. Their commission by Visionaire in collaboration with Grammy-winning artist Anthony Roth Costanzo and MUR was granted entry into the Woodstock Film Festival. And their video for the Tony and the Kiki was nominated for a Queerty.
Part of Navigating Identity Exhibition and Workshop Series, which is funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.
