Christine Nguyen harnesses an expansive array of artistic processes to bridge the worldly and the divine, the macrocosm and microcosm.
Aurora, Colorado | Long Beach, California | christinenguyen.art | @seamoonshe
Both art and science are about looking. They require slowing down, taking in the details, and finding pathways to new knowledge through what simply is. Colorado- and California-based artist Christine Nguyen describes the natural world as “an organic prism,” using it as a springboard to new visions. By blending processes such as cyanotype, photography, salt-crystallization, drawing, and painting, Nguyen brings a philosopher’s inquisitiveness about our place in the universe to large-scale paintings in her recent series of work.
Through pieces such as Cosmic Universe (2024), Nguyen uses everything from gold leaf and collected shells to salt crystals and spray paint to bring together seen and unseen elements of the world. The work features two opposing half-spheres, creating an as-above-so-below symmetry where the cosmic realm reflects the earthly one.
This thread runs through much of Nguyen’s work. Drawing inspiration from the likes of Renaissance-era physician and occultist Robert Fludd—who believed art is “the ape of nature,” a microcosmic form of the universe itself—Nguyen stitches together the worldly and the divine.
This mirroring—as in Fludd’s assertion that every plant on earth has an analogous star in the heavens—is Nguyen’s way of accessing new worlds. In this rich middle ground where the microscopic and macroscopic are overlaid, Nguyen makes room to envision new spaces entirely. These contemplative zones seem to be evidence of her devotion to a hopeful future.
But they are also invitations to viewers to do some exploring on their own. Through both their scale and content, Nguyen’s work conjures sensations of being unbound. With their oceanic dissolution of the borders of our world, we’re free to dream up new ones.
