May 3 - August 18, 2024
Opening reception: Saturday, May 4, 6 to 9 pm
The Claremont Lewis Museum of Art presents The Great Perfection, a two-person exhibition of sculptures by Charles Long & paintings by Khang Bao Nguyen.
The Great Perfection explores two artists’ distinct approaches to the aesthetic expression of nondual consciousness. Nondualism, an ancient concept rooted in Eastern thought and religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism, recognizes the fundamental nature of reality as the unbounded wholeness of universal consciousness.
In a world that seems more fractured and disconnected than ever, sculptures by Charles Long juxtaposed with paintings by Khang Bảo Nguyễn lead the viewer to consider the underlying oneness of all beings. Nondualism offers a pathway to transcend the dichotomies of us and them, subject and object, self and other, while still affirming the reality of manifold existence.
THE EXHIBITION
The exhibition title, “The Great Perfection” is drawn from Dzogchen Buddhism and refers to the wholeness of Being that underlie manifest reality. In Dzogchen, each individual’s fundamental nature is not something that needs to be achieved. It is ever present and one must simply access it. The experience of this exhibition offers a through line between the presence and creative flow that happen in an artist’s studio and the potentiality of art objects as catalysts for revelatory experience.
The exhibition, curated by CLMA’s Associate Director of Exhibitions and Collections Seth Pringle, offers a through line between the presence and creative flow that happen in an artist’s studio and the potentiality of art objects as catalysts for revelatory experience.
THE ARTISTS
Charles Long is a sculptor living and working in Pomona, California. Known for his efforts to re-examine the tropes of modernist sculpture within his wildly distinctive and speculative practice, his recent work has taken on a psychedelic and metaphysical approach in his search to answer the question: ‘what is sacred art?’ Works cast in amalgamations of bronze, aluminum, brass, nickel, mica and gypsum reveal a creative alchemy born out of a commitment to altered states of consciousness and a faith in the eternal presence, the ground out of which the illusion of material reality appears. He does not see his sculptures as part of contemporary art practice; the resultant objects are at once ancient and futuristic. Amorphous idols, irresistible portals, and sumptuous incisions access a world beyond language where presence is favored over ideas.
Born in 1958 in Long Branch, New Jersey, Long received a BFA from Philadelphia College of Art and earned an MFA from Yale University in 1988. He was the recipient of the 2008 Award of Merit Medal for Sculpture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York. Long’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions worldwide and featured in exhibitions at the UCLA Hammer Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He is currently a Professor of Art at the University of California, Riverside.
Khang Bảo Nguyễn is a painter and scholar of philosophy and religion. He creates abstract paintings that combine diagrammatic stability with effervescent luminosity. His heavily layered surfaces offer a space for spiritual buoyancy and balance where the symmetry of mandalas combine with the weightlessness of outer space prompt self-reflection. Their perfectly human scale and verticality envelope the viewer, opening a window into boundless realization. The viewing of Nguyễn’s paintings is an inherently meditative act, where visual abstraction offers an opportunity for pre-conceptual.
Nguyễn immigrated to the US after the fall of Vietnam to communism in the 1970s. He holds a MA and is a PhD candidate, both in philosophy and religious thought at Claremont Graduate University. His spiritual understanding and aesthetic visual vocabulary developed over the past decade of studies with teacher Madelon Wheeler-Gibb at Spacious Mind meditation center. His work has been included in numerous exhibitions throughout Southern California, including Transcendent at Louis Stern Fine Arts last year. Khang is currently represented by the Wonzimer gallery in Los Angeles with a solo exhibition scheduled for November 2024.
Claremont Lewis Museum of Art
200 W. First Street
in the historic Claremont Depot
Claremont, CA 91711
Opening reception: Saturday, May 4, 6 to 9 pm
The Claremont Lewis Museum of Art presents The Great Perfection, a two-person exhibition of sculptures by Charles Long & paintings by Khang Bao Nguyen.
The Great Perfection explores two artists’ distinct approaches to the aesthetic expression of nondual consciousness. Nondualism, an ancient concept rooted in Eastern thought and religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism, recognizes the fundamental nature of reality as the unbounded wholeness of universal consciousness.
In a world that seems more fractured and disconnected than ever, sculptures by Charles Long juxtaposed with paintings by Khang Bảo Nguyễn lead the viewer to consider the underlying oneness of all beings. Nondualism offers a pathway to transcend the dichotomies of us and them, subject and object, self and other, while still affirming the reality of manifold existence.
THE EXHIBITION
The exhibition title, “The Great Perfection” is drawn from Dzogchen Buddhism and refers to the wholeness of Being that underlie manifest reality. In Dzogchen, each individual’s fundamental nature is not something that needs to be achieved. It is ever present and one must simply access it. The experience of this exhibition offers a through line between the presence and creative flow that happen in an artist’s studio and the potentiality of art objects as catalysts for revelatory experience.
The exhibition, curated by CLMA’s Associate Director of Exhibitions and Collections Seth Pringle, offers a through line between the presence and creative flow that happen in an artist’s studio and the potentiality of art objects as catalysts for revelatory experience.
THE ARTISTS
Charles Long is a sculptor living and working in Pomona, California. Known for his efforts to re-examine the tropes of modernist sculpture within his wildly distinctive and speculative practice, his recent work has taken on a psychedelic and metaphysical approach in his search to answer the question: ‘what is sacred art?’ Works cast in amalgamations of bronze, aluminum, brass, nickel, mica and gypsum reveal a creative alchemy born out of a commitment to altered states of consciousness and a faith in the eternal presence, the ground out of which the illusion of material reality appears. He does not see his sculptures as part of contemporary art practice; the resultant objects are at once ancient and futuristic. Amorphous idols, irresistible portals, and sumptuous incisions access a world beyond language where presence is favored over ideas.
Born in 1958 in Long Branch, New Jersey, Long received a BFA from Philadelphia College of Art and earned an MFA from Yale University in 1988. He was the recipient of the 2008 Award of Merit Medal for Sculpture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York. Long’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions worldwide and featured in exhibitions at the UCLA Hammer Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He is currently a Professor of Art at the University of California, Riverside.
Khang Bảo Nguyễn is a painter and scholar of philosophy and religion. He creates abstract paintings that combine diagrammatic stability with effervescent luminosity. His heavily layered surfaces offer a space for spiritual buoyancy and balance where the symmetry of mandalas combine with the weightlessness of outer space prompt self-reflection. Their perfectly human scale and verticality envelope the viewer, opening a window into boundless realization. The viewing of Nguyễn’s paintings is an inherently meditative act, where visual abstraction offers an opportunity for pre-conceptual.
Nguyễn immigrated to the US after the fall of Vietnam to communism in the 1970s. He holds a MA and is a PhD candidate, both in philosophy and religious thought at Claremont Graduate University. His spiritual understanding and aesthetic visual vocabulary developed over the past decade of studies with teacher Madelon Wheeler-Gibb at Spacious Mind meditation center. His work has been included in numerous exhibitions throughout Southern California, including Transcendent at Louis Stern Fine Arts last year. Khang is currently represented by the Wonzimer gallery in Los Angeles with a solo exhibition scheduled for November 2024.
Claremont Lewis Museum of Art
200 W. First Street
in the historic Claremont Depot
Claremont, CA 91711
Time-Being: Scientific, Philosophical and Mystical Perspectives
Wonzimer Gallery
Opening: January 5th, 5 - 10 pm
On view: January 5th - February 9th, 2024
Artists:
Russell Crotty
Tomory Dodge
Sharon Ellis
Nancy Evans
Lia Halloran
Charles Long
linn meyers
Sandeep Mukherjee
Khang Nguyen
Patti Oleon
Lisa Wedgeworth
Marcus Zuniga
“Firewood becomes ash, and it does not become firewood again. Yet, do not suppose that firewood is before and ash after. You should understand that firewood abides in the phenomenal expression of firewood, which fully includes past and future, and is independent of past and future. Ash abides in the phenomenal expression of ash, which fully includes past and future, and is independent of past and future. Just as firewood does not become firewood again after it is ash, you do not return to birth after death.”
- Zen master Eihei Dōgen (13th century)
This exhibition invites the viewer to perceive the featured artworks in light of certain scientific, philosophical, and mystical views on the nature of time-being.
The scientific account of time, which views time as an empty receptacle of discrete nows, is inadequate in its explanation of how consciousness perceives entities across time. For instance, Newtonian time explains the separation of successive moments but not their continuity. That is to say, each moment is not only independent of every other but also of the perceiver’s mind.
Since temporal events, like listening to a melody or watching someone in motion, are characterized by and experienced as a unified succession, a phenomenological account can give a more integral explanation of time. This explanation is less concerned with the content of an entity and more with how it manifests as a unity of temporal flux. It demonstrates how consciousness apprehends and unifies successive moments, giving rise to the perception of the becoming of entities. A flow of successive moments is more than a collection of discrete nows; the moments are synthesized into a unity while their distinctions in the order are maintained.
The issue of time is intertwined with the nature of being. Time and the self are understood to be inseparable: The self is not simply in time; the self is time and time is the self. Subjective temporal life arises through the apprehension and unification of successive states of mind and body. It is an ongoing construct that is actualized and disclosed by the structures of consciousness. This phenomenology of time together with an ontology of the self give an account of the structures of consciousness that constitute time-being, or rather time-becoming.
Finally, Eihei Dogen views time-being to be more than the coming and going, before and after, birth and death, of moments. When the view of succession is broken through, time-being is recognized to be a spacious field of abidance, which is at once inclusive of momentary consciousness and independent of it. Moreover, disclosed as an immediate fullness, time-being exceeds any momentary becoming toward consummation in the future.
Wonzimer Gallery
Opening: January 5th, 5 - 10 pm
On view: January 5th - February 9th, 2024
Artists:
Russell Crotty
Tomory Dodge
Sharon Ellis
Nancy Evans
Lia Halloran
Charles Long
linn meyers
Sandeep Mukherjee
Khang Nguyen
Patti Oleon
Lisa Wedgeworth
Marcus Zuniga
“Firewood becomes ash, and it does not become firewood again. Yet, do not suppose that firewood is before and ash after. You should understand that firewood abides in the phenomenal expression of firewood, which fully includes past and future, and is independent of past and future. Ash abides in the phenomenal expression of ash, which fully includes past and future, and is independent of past and future. Just as firewood does not become firewood again after it is ash, you do not return to birth after death.”
- Zen master Eihei Dōgen (13th century)
This exhibition invites the viewer to perceive the featured artworks in light of certain scientific, philosophical, and mystical views on the nature of time-being.
The scientific account of time, which views time as an empty receptacle of discrete nows, is inadequate in its explanation of how consciousness perceives entities across time. For instance, Newtonian time explains the separation of successive moments but not their continuity. That is to say, each moment is not only independent of every other but also of the perceiver’s mind.
Since temporal events, like listening to a melody or watching someone in motion, are characterized by and experienced as a unified succession, a phenomenological account can give a more integral explanation of time. This explanation is less concerned with the content of an entity and more with how it manifests as a unity of temporal flux. It demonstrates how consciousness apprehends and unifies successive moments, giving rise to the perception of the becoming of entities. A flow of successive moments is more than a collection of discrete nows; the moments are synthesized into a unity while their distinctions in the order are maintained.
The issue of time is intertwined with the nature of being. Time and the self are understood to be inseparable: The self is not simply in time; the self is time and time is the self. Subjective temporal life arises through the apprehension and unification of successive states of mind and body. It is an ongoing construct that is actualized and disclosed by the structures of consciousness. This phenomenology of time together with an ontology of the self give an account of the structures of consciousness that constitute time-being, or rather time-becoming.
Finally, Eihei Dogen views time-being to be more than the coming and going, before and after, birth and death, of moments. When the view of succession is broken through, time-being is recognized to be a spacious field of abidance, which is at once inclusive of momentary consciousness and independent of it. Moreover, disclosed as an immediate fullness, time-being exceeds any momentary becoming toward consummation in the future.
Intersect Palm Springs
February 9 - 12, 2023
Booth 310
Louis Stern Fine Arts will be participating in this year's Intersect art fair at the Palm Springs Convention Center.
Artists:
Karl Benjamin
Kymber Holt
Heather Hutchison
Mark Leonard
Helen Lundeberg
Khang Nguyen
Anita Payró
Mary Anna Pomonis
February 9 - 12, 2023
Booth 310
Louis Stern Fine Arts will be participating in this year's Intersect art fair at the Palm Springs Convention Center.
Artists:
Karl Benjamin
Kymber Holt
Heather Hutchison
Mark Leonard
Helen Lundeberg
Khang Nguyen
Anita Payró
Mary Anna Pomonis
Transcendent
Curated by Michael Duncan
Louis Stern Fine Arts
Opening: Dec. 10, 4-7 pm
December 10, 2022 - January 28, 2023
Artists:
Eric Beltz
Sharon Ellis
Nancy Evans
Kymber Holt
Laura Lasworth
Stephen Mueller
Lee Mullican
Khang Nguyen
Mary Anna Pomonis
Frederick Wight
Tom Wudl
“Stemming from the achievements of Kandinsky, Malevich, Mondrian, and Hilma af Klint, ensuing generations of artists have desired to create spiritually illuminating abstract art. The Transcendental Painting Group of the 1930s (TPG) - surveyed in the traveling exhibition Another World: The Transcendental Painting Group (opening at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on December 18) - was dedicated to the creation and promotion of art that carried painting beyond the appearance of the physical world, utilizing the rich symbolic connotations of geometry and form.
The artists of this exhibition continue that pursuit in various ways. In 1960 TPG founder Raymond Jonson selected works by Frederick Wight for a solo exhibition at the University of New Mexico. After Wight’s 1973 retirement as Director of the University Art Gallery at UCLA, he devoted himself full time to painting, creating a large body of hallucinatory landscapes and luminous seascapes. New York painter Stephen Mueller’s richly hued lyrical abstractions were inspired by Tantric sources, German Romanticism, Islamic art and Eastern philosophies. Enhanced by shimmering desert light, Lee Mullican’s abstractions reference Native American spirituality and artifacts. Now living near the former studio of TPG master Agnes Pelton, Sharon Ellis creates works that transfigure our perceptions of nature into cosmic realms. Nancy Evans’ poetic responses to nature result in metaphorically rich luminous abstractions. Khang Nguyen, Mary Anna Pomonis, and Eric Beltz explore the power of geometry to evoke contemplative thought and resonant emotions. Kymber Holt exposes the evocative connotations of macrocosmic and microcosmic vision. Finally, in a quiet vein, Tom Wudl and Laura Lasworth offer mandala-like paeans to the potential beauty and serenity of thought and nature.
In an art world steeped in cynicism, political rancor, and frenzied commerce, the works of Transcendent offer an alternative, transformative, and more hopeful vision of our place in the universe.”
- Michael Duncan
This show is in conjunction with the exhibit Another World: The Transcendental Painting Group at LACMA, curated by Michael Duncan
December 18, 2022 - June 19, 2023
Curated by Michael Duncan
Louis Stern Fine Arts
Opening: Dec. 10, 4-7 pm
December 10, 2022 - January 28, 2023
Artists:
Eric Beltz
Sharon Ellis
Nancy Evans
Kymber Holt
Laura Lasworth
Stephen Mueller
Lee Mullican
Khang Nguyen
Mary Anna Pomonis
Frederick Wight
Tom Wudl
“Stemming from the achievements of Kandinsky, Malevich, Mondrian, and Hilma af Klint, ensuing generations of artists have desired to create spiritually illuminating abstract art. The Transcendental Painting Group of the 1930s (TPG) - surveyed in the traveling exhibition Another World: The Transcendental Painting Group (opening at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on December 18) - was dedicated to the creation and promotion of art that carried painting beyond the appearance of the physical world, utilizing the rich symbolic connotations of geometry and form.
The artists of this exhibition continue that pursuit in various ways. In 1960 TPG founder Raymond Jonson selected works by Frederick Wight for a solo exhibition at the University of New Mexico. After Wight’s 1973 retirement as Director of the University Art Gallery at UCLA, he devoted himself full time to painting, creating a large body of hallucinatory landscapes and luminous seascapes. New York painter Stephen Mueller’s richly hued lyrical abstractions were inspired by Tantric sources, German Romanticism, Islamic art and Eastern philosophies. Enhanced by shimmering desert light, Lee Mullican’s abstractions reference Native American spirituality and artifacts. Now living near the former studio of TPG master Agnes Pelton, Sharon Ellis creates works that transfigure our perceptions of nature into cosmic realms. Nancy Evans’ poetic responses to nature result in metaphorically rich luminous abstractions. Khang Nguyen, Mary Anna Pomonis, and Eric Beltz explore the power of geometry to evoke contemplative thought and resonant emotions. Kymber Holt exposes the evocative connotations of macrocosmic and microcosmic vision. Finally, in a quiet vein, Tom Wudl and Laura Lasworth offer mandala-like paeans to the potential beauty and serenity of thought and nature.
In an art world steeped in cynicism, political rancor, and frenzied commerce, the works of Transcendent offer an alternative, transformative, and more hopeful vision of our place in the universe.”
- Michael Duncan
This show is in conjunction with the exhibit Another World: The Transcendental Painting Group at LACMA, curated by Michael Duncan
December 18, 2022 - June 19, 2023
Pithoprakta at the Cooper Design Space
Curated by Helen Chung
Opening: Oct. 1st, 4-7 pm
October 1 - December 23, 2022
Artists:
Tomory Dodge
Iva Gueorguieva
David Lloyd
Amy MacKay
Dave Muller
Joshua Nathanson
Khang Nguyen
"Pithoprakta is inspired by a composition by Iannis Xenakis. He composed it in 1955 for string orchestra (with two trombones, xylophone and wood block).
‘Pithoprakta’ means “action through probability’. Breaking down his scheme for 46 string instruments, Xenaxis drew an analogy between the string instruments moving independently (effectively instrumental solos) through their respective pitch ranges towards variable rhythmic and harmonic intersections and points of convergence, and gas molecules moving at varying speeds through shifting distributions with corresponding fluctuating temperatures.
The show is intended to appropriate the ground-breaking aspect of Xenakis’ compositional orchestral scheme in particular, not the mathematical source from which his composition was written. Each artist’s work resonates with different aspects of music— gestural, rhythmic and lyrical, rigorous diagram - like designs addressing tone, pitch and color, or even inspired by iconic printed images we associate with our favorite bands. The pieces in the show, each being very different from one another, ‘sound off’ against each other to create harmony (and tensions) as well as unexpected segues.
Another aspect of Xenakis' work that seems to connect with painting is the overall impact of the piece resulting in a static or immobile totalizing effect. The great complexity of the progression of movements by 46 distinct voices, moving independently with an idiosyncratic synchronicity and somehow arriving at stillness, as if approaching the sort of thermal equilibrium the composer anticipated, and yet, retaining their energies independent of one another; not unlike the complexities of movements these paintings had undergone before arriving at stillness."
Curated by Helen Chung
Opening: Oct. 1st, 4-7 pm
October 1 - December 23, 2022
Artists:
Tomory Dodge
Iva Gueorguieva
David Lloyd
Amy MacKay
Dave Muller
Joshua Nathanson
Khang Nguyen
"Pithoprakta is inspired by a composition by Iannis Xenakis. He composed it in 1955 for string orchestra (with two trombones, xylophone and wood block).
‘Pithoprakta’ means “action through probability’. Breaking down his scheme for 46 string instruments, Xenaxis drew an analogy between the string instruments moving independently (effectively instrumental solos) through their respective pitch ranges towards variable rhythmic and harmonic intersections and points of convergence, and gas molecules moving at varying speeds through shifting distributions with corresponding fluctuating temperatures.
The show is intended to appropriate the ground-breaking aspect of Xenakis’ compositional orchestral scheme in particular, not the mathematical source from which his composition was written. Each artist’s work resonates with different aspects of music— gestural, rhythmic and lyrical, rigorous diagram - like designs addressing tone, pitch and color, or even inspired by iconic printed images we associate with our favorite bands. The pieces in the show, each being very different from one another, ‘sound off’ against each other to create harmony (and tensions) as well as unexpected segues.
Another aspect of Xenakis' work that seems to connect with painting is the overall impact of the piece resulting in a static or immobile totalizing effect. The great complexity of the progression of movements by 46 distinct voices, moving independently with an idiosyncratic synchronicity and somehow arriving at stillness, as if approaching the sort of thermal equilibrium the composer anticipated, and yet, retaining their energies independent of one another; not unlike the complexities of movements these paintings had undergone before arriving at stillness."
Repetition of Difference at the Torrance Art Museum
Curated by Khang Nguyen
January 22 - March 12, 2022
Artists:
Asad Faulwell
Ibuki Kuramochi
Khang Nguyen
Alicia Piller
Brian Randolph
Lorenzo Hurtado Segovia
Linnea Spransy
Kayla Tange
This exhibition contends that the innermost nature of living and material organisms is not homogeneous but rather is constituted by differential relations to alterity, thus acting to undermine hierarchies based on oppressive notions of identity and uniformity.
In regard to the relationship of identity (homogeneity) and difference (heterogeneity) in past philosophies, the former is conceived of as primary and intrinsic, and the latter as secondary and an extrinsic relation between two self-identical entities.
The subversion of this traditional assumption gives rise to the notions of “intrinsic difference” and “differential repetition”. Identity persists, but is now a secondary principle derived from a prior relation between differentials. Difference is no longer simply an extrinsic contrast between entities but becomes a genetic principle that constitutes the sufficient condition of intrinsic heterogeneity.
The concept of “differential repetition” is conceived of as the repetition or production not of an original self-identical entity but of difference. To be more specific, this concept denotes an ongoing process by which the inner nature of concrete entities is developed and differentiated through complex relations with otherness. Everything that exists only becomes and never is as it differs from itself in each moment by virtue of relations to alterity.
Difference, then, is within entities and not merely between them.
Together these notions of “intrinsic difference” and “differential repetition” constitute the genetic principle that accounts for the experience of concrete individuals in the present.
Curated by Khang Nguyen
January 22 - March 12, 2022
Artists:
Asad Faulwell
Ibuki Kuramochi
Khang Nguyen
Alicia Piller
Brian Randolph
Lorenzo Hurtado Segovia
Linnea Spransy
Kayla Tange
This exhibition contends that the innermost nature of living and material organisms is not homogeneous but rather is constituted by differential relations to alterity, thus acting to undermine hierarchies based on oppressive notions of identity and uniformity.
In regard to the relationship of identity (homogeneity) and difference (heterogeneity) in past philosophies, the former is conceived of as primary and intrinsic, and the latter as secondary and an extrinsic relation between two self-identical entities.
The subversion of this traditional assumption gives rise to the notions of “intrinsic difference” and “differential repetition”. Identity persists, but is now a secondary principle derived from a prior relation between differentials. Difference is no longer simply an extrinsic contrast between entities but becomes a genetic principle that constitutes the sufficient condition of intrinsic heterogeneity.
The concept of “differential repetition” is conceived of as the repetition or production not of an original self-identical entity but of difference. To be more specific, this concept denotes an ongoing process by which the inner nature of concrete entities is developed and differentiated through complex relations with otherness. Everything that exists only becomes and never is as it differs from itself in each moment by virtue of relations to alterity.
Difference, then, is within entities and not merely between them.
Together these notions of “intrinsic difference” and “differential repetition” constitute the genetic principle that accounts for the experience of concrete individuals in the present.