Sarah Bowen Gallery is honored to present a new work by Phong Bui. The third in an ongoing series and the second presented at Sarah Bowen Gallery, Hybrid Carnival for St. Exupéry #3 is a direct response to the artist’s preceding installation at the gallery (on view from July 1 to August 7). The past several years have held an array of Bui’s fantastic spatial interventions, from the pensive Homage series to the exuberant Night Flight #1. It was the latter, an award recipient at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which disclosed the impetus for the work at hand. At a decisive moment in its deconstruction, Bui was struck by the raw energy retained in Night Flight #1’s bared wall drawings. Recognizing potential for fresh development, he considered amending his next work through a subsequent installation based on its schematics.

Hybrid Carnival for St. Exupéry #3 is the veritable palimpsest of those thoughts. It marks crucial departures from Bui’s creative routine, including particularly his skepticism towards any grounds or limitations. To create this work, Bui has upended those aversions and engaged a space that was heavily prescribed, but no less ripe with newly realized possibilities.

Drawing is simply one facet consumed in the soaring dialogue of taut lines and dynamic forms sustaining the crystalline world that the enveloped viewer must navigate. Bui’s installations combine drawing, painting and sculpture into a singularly textured experience where distinctions between them become increasingly unclear.

This exhibit will be accommodated with a catalogue and essay, “A Room for Everybody,” by the philosopher and art critic Paul Mattick.