Photographer Pipo Nguyen-duy to exhibit at Kenyon College's Olin Gallery

GAMBIER, Ohio (September 22, 2004) Photographer Pipo Nguyen-duy (Pipo), whose art combines photography with performance, theater, sculpture, and installation, will exhibit his work in Kenyon College's Olin Art Gallery this fall. The exhibition, titled "AnOther Western," will open on Thursday, September 30, and run through Saturday, October 30.

The artist will give a talk on Thursday, October 14, in the Olin Auditorium at 7:30 p.m. A reception will follow in the gallery.

Pipo came to the United States as a Vietnamese refugee in 1975. "AnOther Western," which is an ongoing project, deals with his assimilation in the West by presenting self-portraits in the style of the popular nineteenth-century tintype, a photographic process that was invented, coincidentally, at Kenyon in 1856. In this extended series, Pipo poses and dresses variously as a soldier, a gunslinger, a miner, an amateur boxer, and an itinerant street musician.

The goal, according to the artist, is "to humorously and ironically question and challenge the legitimacy and authority of the western myth." Another series in progress, "East of Eden," features large, staged color narrative photographs intended to complicate our notion of the American landscape as a metaphor for nationalism and optimism.

A graduate of the University of New Mexico with a master's degree in fine art, Pipo is an assistant professor of art at Oberlin College. He has exhibited his work nationally, and he recently completed an artist's residency at Light Work, in Syracuse, New York.

The Olin Gallery is open Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Admission is free. For more information, please call 740-427-5346.