Savage Parallelograms

Costumes, Wall Painting, Collages, Animation, Short Stories, Musical Performance.

Savage Parallelograms is an ongoing collection of objects from a world where the wild and melancholy blend in with their surrounding landscape.

A wonderful review by Gregg Perkins:

Combining storytelling and set design, Huong Ngo has constructed an awkwardly playful environment consisting of wall painting, sculpture and collage which places viewers as central elements within the narrative of Savage Parallelograms. Several small collages consist of gridded paper and stitched felt combined with drawing to portray a naive yet existential story that unfolds between two feral animal twins that are seemingly trapped in, and moving though Ngo’s invented world. To augment the narrative, Ngo has constructed an environment reminiscent of Yayoi Kusama’s early installation works, but recast through a digital framework to include brightly orange geometric wall painting referencing the flatness of digital design; wearable paper jackets and felt headgear that deftly mirror the landscapes within the collages; and an inflatable figure-eight sculpture into which viewers can immerse themselves. The sculptural props here reinforce an interchangeable relationship between the gallery space and the pixilated landscape presented within the collages, thereby employing the immediate and sculptural elements as narrative and fictional conventions. Within the collages, twin characters exchange deadpan dialog while performing mundane tasks together, as if to pleasantly acknowledge being trapped within the media itself. This form of reflexivity evokes a central aspect of video gaming: namely, where participants are placed in, and fundamental to the structure of the narrative itself. To underscore this theme, Ngo appeared in costume at the opening and performed violin music, which further illuminates a growing tendency within young artists to embrace a blurring of the virtual and fictional narratives with the real.

All photos courtesy of Kat Parker, duchess.

Bert Stabler's preview in The Chicago Reader

"Iconic feminist artist Suzanne Lacy quotes in Artforum the recently-deceased Allan Kaprow, founder of the 1950s interactive performance-events known as'happenings,' saying, 'Open-endedness, to me, is democratic and challenges the mind.' Unfortunately, more pedagogical and therapeutic aspects of his legacy often predominate in current 'relational' art, which talks about 'play,' but then offers instead an orgy of alternative-art-star idolatry.

Textile and technology artist Huong Ngo is returning warmth to the participatory mini-spectacle. In a show that opened last week at Heaven Gallery, 'Innovations in Safety, 1983-2003,' she and two collaborators, George Monteleone and Alexander Stewart, who call themselves 'Training & Development,' chronologically present an array of artifacts, fashion items, photos, and videos in a 'Career Retrospective Exhibition' whose retro-hip take on corporate kitsch is far more disarming than that of, say, Mike Judge’s film Office Space.

...Ngo presents an equally scrappy, more subtle, less structured immersive experience, 'Savage Parallelograms.' In this geometric-camoflauge tableau, viewers are offered backdrops, props, conjoined costumes, and an array of sculptural helmets, prompted then to simply become 'landscapes from the shoulders up.' Ngo does provide conceptual context for the show, in the form of drawings, prints, animations, and stories about feral children and twin relationships."

From Paul Klein's review in Artletter

"Huong Ngo was raised in North Carolina which helps explain her interest in dichotomies. Exhibiting at Duchess (owned and operated by two of Rhona Hoffman’s star employees, Kat Parker and Katie Rashid) Ngo is interested in how we humans interact with civilization and nature. And sometimes both. She asks us to don these playful, humorous, slightly ridiculous costumes to better come to grips with ourselves and to help her better understand her heritage and her life. Though compact, this is one of the stronger exhibits I’ve seen recently, measured by the thoughts it provokes and the time they endure. Though the questions it raises are serious the strategy it employes is fun and playful, better allowing us access to participate. Well done. "