INTERVIEW: Christian Nguyen On April 1st I met with Christian Nguyen at his Studio in Brooklyn. A representation of Christian Nguyen's piece First Human ATM, has been included in the Unambiguous exhibition.

AWD:How do you relate these architectural pieces to your earlier work that dealt with creating your own currency?
CHRISTIAN NGUYEN: The creation of a cohesive worldview is a way of expressing a subjective consciousness. It is just one way to structure an approach to artmaking or into a subject matter. My interest with the current project deals with the psychology of space and its interaction with the viewer. The currency project explores how value is created through interpersonal relationships. The thread that runs through these projects is the element of mediation that exists through the work. By focusing on specific issues of space and systems of evaluation, I hope to understand the process in which culture influences our consciousness.

AWD: Is your work inherently political?
CHRISTIAN NGUYEN: I think my work is based from a historical perspective. I am interested in broader ideas of identity and consciousness based on an accumulated cultural experience. I see my work as a way to understand the nature and development of a collective unconscious. Why there are recurring themes and how archetypes function.

AWD: I’m interested in the idea of Utopia. What interests you about it?
CHRISTIAN NGUYEN: An imagined place or state of things in which everything is perfect the object of desire is unattainable, and thus, infinite. For the Islamic mathematician, the infinite is a personification of the universe and therefore approaching the concept of god. Unfortunately, dictators create utopias as the ultimate expression of total power. Perfection is a condition that is both oppressive and irresistible... this paradox fascinates me.

AWD: Are you interested in creating a new cultural reference point for these places?
CHRISTIAN NGUYEN: I use architectural imagery as a metaphor to represent control, society, mental space etc. I am creating an imagined place where the aesthetic language is borrowed from multiple cultures. This imagined world, like the currency project is a manifestation of a process that reflects a collective experience and ultimately hopes to enhance the experience of culture. At the same time, I am aiming for a universal ideal in mashing different cultures together.

AWD: These architectural pieces remind me of Anselm Kiefer’s work by showing a piece of some place without much reference point. Do you feel that you are memorializing these places?
CHRISTIAN NGUYEN: The definition of memory is the capacity of a substance to return to a previous state or a condition after having been altered or deformed. So what is that state from a human perspective? Is it to return to the state of being in which there is no separation between the individual and culture’s meaning - the thing that defines him or her. Or is it a matter of finding the essence of things?

I am not making these images with the intention of memorializing a place. While Kiefer’s incredible work involves his identity as a German artist, I don't have a specific cultural identity to claim. This is a process that I am beginning to undestand, and finding for myself.

AWD: How important is it that people know the history of these places?
CHRISTIAN NGUYEN: I hope that people bring their own references to the experience of art and to my work. If history is the experience of the past then I think that references or history would greatly expand and enrich one's experience of art and thus the sense of one's own history. At the same time, I think a work is successful when it can also start the dialogue within its own parameters and create the space to include more content than it set out with.

AWD: There is a perfection in your work. Are these pieces expressions of a type of Utopia?
CHRISTIAN NGUYEN: An Utopist vision has to be total, incorporating the details of life as well as the broader aspects of the social order. This is best manifest when the vision is accompanied by an ideology that is the operating manual to this world. In general, every society is an echo of the utopia model that created it. We see this with fascism, in the corporate world, within the institution of religions and alternation communes. The blueprints, or the relics of this utopic seed are found in the architecture and in the layout of these systems. The desire to control the environment and our social identity is somehow an expression of our human culture because we are essentially creative beings.

AWD: Do you have any notions of what is to come next with your work?
CHRISTIAN NGUYEN: I like to work with many ideas at the one time and try to think expansively and broadly. I enjoy the process of researching my work and ideas in a historical context to find the discussions that have occurred before and to continue the thread of conversation from my current perspective. I have always been interested in the relationship between corporate and sacred space and use this core theme as a starting point for new ideas.

AWD: Do you feel like you have actualized what you would like to communicate?
CHRISTIAN NGUYEN: There is a difference between illustrating an idea and creating the space to enter a forum of ideas. I am more challenged by the former. I create a space that I can step into and explore. Even though my work seems tight and rational, I actually let the conceptual process come as the work is made. In this way, I feel a connection is made between the practice of drawing and seeing.

AWD: Which is a more important to you the process of creating work or the final outcome?
CHRISTIAN NGUYEN: The process has become important because the drawings themselves are stages of mapping a metaphoric and a fictitious space. If you look at the early drawings, they are focused on a theme whereas the later drawings are passages from one idea to another. This applies as well with other media. Working in a visual medium emphasizes the necessity of looking and then responding. I am not a conceptualist, and work is completed by textual or verbal description is just not my thing. The conceptual response, in my opinion, occurs when the intellect is confronted with something that comes from a deeper source. I believe in the phenomena of recognition that can exist on a subtle and primal level that triggers unexpected reactions. Thus, the final outcome or moment of completion opens more channels and introduces more questions.