Danh Vo Selected Press
Michael Newman. «Intimate Bonds: The Art of Danh Vo», Parkett, n 93, 2013.
Michael Newman. «Intimate Bonds: The Art of Danh Vo», Parkett, n 93, 2013.
Michael Newman. «Intimate Bonds: The Art of Danh Vo», Parkett, n 93, 2013.
Michael Newman. «Intimate Bonds: The Art of Danh Vo», Parkett, n 93, 2013.
Michael Newman. «Intimate Bonds: The Art of Danh Vo», Parkett, n 93, 2013.
Michael Newman. «Intimate Bonds: The Art of Danh Vo», Parkett, n 93, 2013.
Michael Newman. «Intimate Bonds: The Art of Danh Vo», Parkett, n 93, 2013.
Michael Newman. «Intimate Bonds: The Art of Danh Vo», Parkett, n 93, 2013.
Michael Newman. «Intimate Bonds: The Art of Danh Vo», Parkett, n 93, 2013.
Michael Newman. «Intimate Bonds: The Art of Danh Vo», Parkett, n 93, 2013.
Danh Vo Log Dog at Kurimanzutto, Mexico City, Mousse Magazine, October 9, 2013. http://moussemagazine.it/danh-vo-kurimanzutto/ Danh Vo Log Dog at Kurimanzutto, Mexico City October 9~2013 Galerie Through works inspired by his life experiences and historically rich readymade objects, artist Danh Vo inter- rogates the construction of inherited cultural values, conflicts, and displacement. Appearing highly personal at first sight, the work of Danh Vo is in fact powerfully political. Neither direct nor confrontational, his practice explores the power games underlying liberal societies, the rules governing those societies, and the fragility of the nation-state idea. When he was a child, Vo s family fled Vietnam and settled in Denmark. His work draws on personal and historical artifacts that directly and indirectly touch on this experience to examine how such items are dispersed across borders or symbolize transnational movements. His family s assimilation to Euro- pean culture and the world historical events that precipitated their flight from Vietnam are also intertwined in his artistic practice; Vo s work illuminates the entwined strands of private experience and collective history that shape our sense of self. Emerging from a process of research, chance encounters, and delicate personal nego- tiations, his
Danh Vo Log Dog at Kurimanzutto, Mexico City, Mousse Magazine, October 9, 2013. http://moussemagazine.it/danh-vo-kurimanzutto/ installations unearth the latent connotations and memories embedded in familiar forms..at Kurimanzutto, Mexico City until 2 November 2013 Above Log Dog, 2013 Galerie
Danh Vo Log Dog at Kurimanzutto, Mexico City, Mousse Magazine, October 9, 2013. http://moussemagazine.it/danh-vo-kurimanzutto/ Galerie Gustav s Wing, 2013 2.2.1861, 2013
Danh Vo Log Dog at Kurimanzutto, Mexico City, Mousse Magazine, October 9, 2013. http://moussemagazine.it/danh-vo-kurimanzutto/ Galerie To feed the Captain s Greed They Poured Liquid Gold in His Mouth, 2013.
Danh Vo Log Dog at Kurimanzutto, Mexico City, Mousse Magazine, October 9, 2013. http://moussemagazine.it/danh-vo-kurimanzutto/ Galerie
Danh Vo Log Dog at Kurimanzutto, Mexico City, Mousse Magazine, October 9, 2013. http://moussemagazine.it/danh-vo-kurimanzutto/ Galerie Danh Vo, Log Dog installation view at Kurimanzutto, Mexico City. Courtesy: the artist and kurimanzutto, Mexico City. Photo: Michel Zabe.
Eric Loret. Danh Vo dans tous ses éclats, Libération, July 2, 2013. Date : 02/07/2013 Pays : FRANCE Page(s) : 24-25 Rubrique : Culture Diffusion : (137831) Périodicité : Quotidien Surface : 85 % Galerie (1/2) MUSEE D'ART MODERNE Page 8 Tous droits de reproduction réservés
(2/2) MUSEE D'ART MODERNE Eric Loret. Danh Vo dans tous ses éclats, Libération, July 2, 2013. Date : 02/07/2013 Pays : FRANCE Page(s) : 24-25 Rubrique : Culture Diffusion : (137831) Périodicité : Quotidien Surface : 85 % Galerie
Stefano Ferrari. Danh Vo, Fabulous Muscles, Dars, N 214, Summer 2013, pp 32-35.
Stefano Ferrari. Danh Vo, Fabulous Muscles, Dars, N 214, Summer 2013, pp 32-35.
Ivo Bonacorsi. Danh Vo: Go Mo Ni Ma Da, Domus, June 11, 2013. http://www.domusweb.it/en/art/2013/06/11/danh_vo_go_mo_nimada.html Galerie «10,100,1000 Vietnam» was one of the most powerful slogans in the 1970s protest movement. It embodied the idea of resisting all imperialism and prophesied the viral escalation of the war in Indochina that spread social conflict to every corner of the globe. It comes to mind when browsing the incredible Angeline Scherf curated exhibition at Paris Musée d art Moderne, dedicated to Danh Vo (1974), a Vietnamese artist naturalized in Denmark.
Ivo Bonacorsi. Danh Vo: Go Mo Ni Ma Da, Domus, June 11, 2013. http://www.domusweb.it/en/art/2013/06/11/danh_vo_go_mo_nimada.html Galerie «Danh Vo, Go Mo Ni Ma Da», installation view at the Musée d Art moderne de la Ville de Paris. Photo by Pierre Antoine. Courtesy of the artist / Galerie, Paris The artist seems to have possessed the large space with the slogan s same desire for multiplication, unfolding his personal strategy of visual and literary micro-conflict. Not only. That energy seems to have been transformed into a highly personal technique, reinventing the grammar of poverista guerrilla warfare: a difficult endeavour that is rarely successful, only in the case of grand civic poetry. Like Indochina, Dahn Vo charges his works with rewrites that metabolise the negativity of human tragedy The artist s personal history is marked by his region s terrible fate and, like Indochina, Dahn Vo charges his works with rewrites that metabolise the negativity of human tragedy. These dramatic stories continually reappear in exhibition spaces; and while no longer topical, they are still important for decoding his creative work.
Ivo Bonacorsi. Danh Vo: Go Mo Ni Ma Da, Domus, June 11, 2013. http://www.domusweb.it/en/art/2013/06/11/danh_vo_go_mo_nimada.html Dahn Vo left Vietnam with his father on a boat that was rescued by a Danish trawler. This event exonerated them from the horrors of the 1970s real-politik which is why all of his works, expertly installed with rare semantic relevance, seem imbued with burning topicality even today. Galerie «Danh Vo, Go Mo Ni Ma Da», installation view at the Musée d Art moderne de la Ville de Paris. Photo by Pierre Antoine. Courtesy of the artist / Galerie, Paris
Ivo Bonacorsi. Danh Vo: Go Mo Ni Ma Da, Domus, June 11, 2013. http://www.domusweb.it/en/art/2013/06/11/danh_vo_go_mo_nimada.html One of the pieces in the exhibition seems to speak of the breakdown of the welfare system in the Nordic countries. Dating from 2005, If you where to climb the Himalayas tomorrow is embedded in today s reality like a splinter. And it is this atemporality that dissolves and unfolds from room to room, from relic to relic. It is a strange and uneasy chamber composition of objects charged with fetishistic power that is being disarmed. Whether it is the reliquary containing the branded personal effects that the artist s father, Phung Vo, bought upon his arrival to the West or the artefacts from the auction of relics and furniture belonging to Robert McNaara, Secretary of Defense during the Kennedy presidency, the result does not change. The artist deconstructs and transfigures a Rolex watch, a Dupont lighter, a US military service ring, or even two Chippendale armchairs that Jacqueline Kennedy gave to the American politician. These personal relics become somewhat anonymous: outdated, with no sense of belonging. Galerie «Danh Vo, Go Mo Ni Ma Da», installation view at the Musée d Art moderne de la Ville de Paris. Photo by Pierre Antoine. Courtesy of the artist / Galerie, Paris It is a strange exhibition, inhabited by a positive mantra that remixes a large quantity of material in a very precise way. There are works from recent exhibitions at Marian Goodman in New York or at Douane Galerie and there are even pieces that were shown at the Tuileries garden during the last edition of the FIAC.
Ivo Bonacorsi. Danh Vo: Go Mo Ni Ma Da, Domus, June 11, 2013. http://www.domusweb.it/en/art/2013/06/11/danh_vo_go_mo_nimada.html Galerie «Danh Vo, Go Mo Ni Ma Da», installation view at the Musée d Art moderne de la Ville de Paris. Photo by Pierre Antoine. Courtesy of the artist / Galerie, Paris But the secret to Danh Vo s art lies precisely in his wise reactivation and reinstallion of all kinds of materials. The artist s Fleurs d interieur from his residence at Paris Kadist Foundation come to mind with their seminal premises for this show. Vo is a master of selective accumulation and redefinition, committed to elegantly conceiving the visual ideology of the perception of the symbolic object. Aside from the title, the splendid and banal cardboard boxes containing all sorts of drinks raised in gold leaf indicate the weight of the material in grams. They allude to the value of the interiorisation of an object; they break the tautological law of retracing and mimic the perfection of the symbolic process. The mechanics of value in art is superimposed on the movements of the unconscious. Nothing is more precious than pure personal signification. The Danh Vo who personally attempted to reexamine the idea of freedom through an obsessive series of marriages and subsequent divorces is not gone. He investigated the multiplication of identity in its codification on paper or in the multiplication of documents: driver s licenses, passports, credit cards. Now he attacks a symbolic level strictly regulated by institutions that could be equivalent to the decomposition of the Statue of Liberty.
Ivo Bonacorsi. Danh Vo: Go Mo Ni Ma Da, Domus, June 11, 2013. http://www.domusweb.it/en/art/2013/06/11/danh_vo_go_mo_nimada.html Galerie «Danh Vo, Go Mo Ni Ma Da», installation view at the Musée d Art moderne de la Ville de Paris. Photo by Pierre Antoine. Courtesy of the artist / Galerie, Paris Fragments of the Statue of Liberty identical to the original from Vo s 1:1 copper scale replica are redistributed in very different places; just as the bizarre and ideological idea of freedom born from the French Revolution, declarations of independence and dominant liberalism were made iconic and forged by Bartholdi. Danh Vo reinvestigates the form of the colossal, like that paradoxical liberty at the entry from the east to the US immigration hall that regulated the flow of immigrants for over a century. The sculpture arrived in New York in pieces and, with the same prefabrication process, returns as detritus of modern and povera sculptures that inhabit museum rooms. It becomes, however, a memorable Grand Canyon crossed by a trickle of crumpled cartons of Evian water, composed in beautiful display cases and raised in gold. It is a sort of underground river, like the inner journey that Danh Vo invites us to undertake and that territorial contingency compelled him to entitle Go Mo Ni Ma Da, a mispronunciation of Good Morning Madame.
Ivo Bonacorsi. Danh Vo: Go Mo Ni Ma Da, Domus, June 11, 2013. http://www.domusweb.it/en/art/2013/06/11/danh_vo_go_mo_nimada.html Galerie «Danh Vo, Go Mo Ni Ma Da», installation view at the Musée d Art moderne de la Ville de Paris. Photo by Pierre Antoine. Courtesy of the artist / Galerie, Paris So it is not only a different Parisian version of his formalist work which he more properly names We the people (detail). The decomposition of Bartholdi s sculpture is accompanied by materials from his well-conceived raids and auction purchases. How could the three large chandeliers that once illuminated the rooms of the Hôtel Majestic in avenue Kleber, where, in January of 73, the peace treaties ending the Vietnam war were signed, be missing from the ville lumiére? The artist bought them in 2009, making them silent witnesses to a war that ended in 1975, but which now bear more poetically the signs of his weighty deconstruction and only an anonymous title with the dates and time of their disassembly. Ivo Bonacorsi
Ivo Bonacorsi. Danh Vo: Go Mo Ni Ma Da, Domus, June 11, 2013. http://www.domusweb.it/en/art/2013/06/11/danh_vo_go_mo_nimada.html Galerie «Danh Vo, Go Mo Ni Ma Da», installation view at the Musée d Art moderne de la Ville de Paris. Photo by Pierre Antoine. Courtesy of the artist / Galerie, Paris Through 18 August 2013 Danh Vo: Go Mo Ni Ma Da Musée d art moderne de la Ville de Paris 11 Avenue du Président Wilson, Paris «Danh Vo, Go Mo Ni Ma Da», installation view at the Musée d Art moderne de la Ville de Paris. Photo by Pierre Antoine. Courtesy of the artist / Galerie, Paris
Marie Maertens. Danh Vo, histoires personnelles, Connaissance des Arts, June 2013, p 100-102. Galerie
Marie Maertens. Danh Vo, histoires personnelles, Connaissance des Arts, June 2013, p 100-102. Galerie
Charlotte Montpezat. Danh Vo, la liberté façon puzzle, Le Huffington Post, May 24, 2013. http://www.huffingtonpost.fr/charlotte-montpezat/exposition-danh-vo_b_3306099.html La Liberté mise en pièce, éparpillée façon puzzle, disséminée comme un virus et mise sur le marché parce que tout s achète... Pas mal, non? C est «We The people» de Danh Vo, à découvrir au musée d Art Moderne de la ville de Paris. Maintenant. Danh Vo a 37 ans. On prononce Ian Vo. C est comme ça. Il est Danois, il vit et travaille à Berlin, et il est d origine vietnamienne, option boat people. Il travaille sur la mémoire, la question de l identité, de la colonisation, de la transmission. Il entrechoque matériel historique et expérience personnelle. Factuel et sensible. D où plein de travaux passionnants, comme celui sur la très émouvante lettre d adieux d un jeune prêtre missionnaire à son père, la veille de son exécution. Pour une centaine d euros, Danh Vo propose un fac-simile de cette lettre. Il en confie l écriture à son père, sans ressource et qui ne parle pas français, et lui reverse l intégralité de la somme. La lettre du fils français qui annonce sa mort à son père devient la lettre du père vietnamien survivant grâce à son fils. Fils qu il a lui même sauvé en l exilant. Vous suivez? Galerie 20.01.1861, 2009- Dernière lettre de Saint Théophane Vénard à son père avant qu il ne soit décapité, copiée par Phung Vo - Danh Võ Encre sur papier / Collection privée Idem pour la récupération des lustres de l Hôtel Majestic où furent signés les Accords de Paris le 27 janvier 1973 entre les États-Unis et le Vietnam. Symbole d une paix volée, de la détresse de son père, mais aussi de son émerveillement devant tant de lumière «que la reine du Danemark mériterait de les avoir dans son château». Autant de re-contexctualisations d objets, très conceptuelles, très douces, très signifiantes... Et puis, il y a «We The People». Une oeuvre en fragments, copie parfaite et profondément originale.
Charlotte Montpezat. Danh Vo, la liberté façon puzzle, Le Huffington Post, May 24, 2013. http://www.huffingtonpost.fr/charlotte-montpezat/exposition-danh-vo_b_3306099.html Galerie We The People (detail) 2011-2013, 2012Cuivre / Copper Danh Vo - Courtesy Galerie We the people, c est la reproduction à l identique de la statue de la liberté. Oui, oui, la même que celle de Bartholdi : 46 mètres de haut, 30 tonnes de cuivre repoussé... Mais là où la reproduction devient création, c est quand Danh Vo décide de ne pas ériger les pièces en statue, mais de singulariser chaque fragment. Ça vous chope un côté ruine tout à coup, façon planète des singes. Et fragile avec ça... la si fine épaisseur devenue apparente. Obligés de regarder le symbole universel d une façon toute nouvelle. Apparition de la fragilité du colosse. We The People (detail) 2011-2013, 2012Cuivre / Copper Danh Vo - Courtesy Galerie
Charlotte Montpezat. Danh Vo, la liberté façon puzzle, Le Huffington Post, May 24, 2013. http://www.huffingtonpost.fr/charlotte-montpezat/exposition-danh-vo_b_3306099.html Il ne s arrête pas là et éparpille les morceaux aux quatre (15 en fait) coins du monde. Et il les vend. Ondulation de chevelure, plissé de robe, boucle de ceinture, doigts... On peut acheter un morceau de liberté où que l on soit. Pour peu qu on en ait les moyens... Alors évidemment, en démantelant le symbole, Danh Vo, l immigré, souligne les failles du concept. La Liberté est en pièces, elle se vend. La statue qui a fait rêver tant d immigrants, postée à l entrée de New York est le fer de lance de l impérialisme occidental, l emblème du capitalisme... Mais quelque part, ça dit aussi que la liberté reste universelle et qu elle continue à faire rêver. On va rester là dessus. «Go Mo Ni Ma Da», le titre de l expo est une expression rapportée par une journaliste américaine s etonnant d être saluée le matin par cette expression, avant de réaliser que c était un mélange d anglais et de français signifiant «Good morning, Madame». Galerie
Laura McLean-Ferris. DANH VO, Art Review, N 168, May 2013, p66-71.
Laura McLean-Ferris. DANH VO, Art Review, N 168, May 2013, p66-71.
Laura McLean-Ferris. DANH VO, Art Review, N 168, May 2013, p66-71.
Laura McLean-Ferris. DANH VO, Art Review, N 168, May 2013, p66-71.
Andrea Vilani. «Danh Vo», Kaleidoscope, March 26, 2013. March 26, 2013 DANH VO interview by Andrea Viliani Galerie Danh Vo, Good Life (detail), 2007 Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin
Andrea Vilani. «Danh Vo», Kaleidoscope, March 26, 2013. AV You moved from Vietnam when you were a child and you found yourself living in Denmark. What kind of projections did you have of the West before moving there? Did you ever experience a sort of reverse exoticism I mean, did you ever perceive the west as an exotic place? DV I was quite young when I came to Denmark, only 4 years old, so somehow I have no memories of Vietnam and no exotic vision of the West. AV Perhaps you experienced a sort of exoticism from your own background rather than from your everyday life. DV Yes, I have, but most of the stuff came through ideas from my parents. Having been subjected to one colonial power after another, Vietnam was really bombarded with Western cultural propaganda. Galerie The piece If I was to Climb the Himalayas Tomorrow (2006), where I present my fatherʹs personal belongings in a glass display case, is very representative of this. Thereʹs a Dupont lighter, a Rolex watch and an American military class ring things that he had long desired when he was in Vietnam, but first managed to acquire only in Denmark. Danh Vo, Untitled (America) (details) BSI Art Collection, Lugano, 2008 Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin
Andrea Vilani. «Danh Vo», Kaleidoscope, March 26, 2013. AV On the occasion of your last show at Isabella Bortolozzi Gallery in Berlin, entitled Good Life, you presented several of these glass display cases, inside of which were a camera and photographs by Joseph Carrier. Carrier came from the international academy of science and was in Vietnam doing anthropological research in the 1960s and 1970s. What the visitor saw in these photographs was a fascination for their subjects, these Vietnamese boys with their supposedly innocent and pure behavior. Why did you select this particular character? Galerie DV You have to take into consideration the fact that the first time Joseph Carrier came to Vietnam in 1962, there had as yet been no gay liberation in the West; he was living under extremely homophobic conditions. Male intimacy in Vietnam is very different from American behavior. Men holding hands or sleeping together doesn t threaten the heterosexual order not that it s a more gay-friendly society, because in Vietnam they don t believe that homosexuality exists, at least not among Vietnamese men. Anyway, it was this situation that attracted Joe s attention on his visits to Vietnam during the war. What he projected onto them was the possibility of a different society where men could have affection for each other. What also intrigued me was the beginnings of the project, how we came to know each other. In the gay community, you have terms for white men that are into a specific race crazy terms, actually, like beanqueen for a white guy who is into Latino guys, junglefever for white guy who is into black guys, and finally ricequeens for the Asian lovers. Well, Joe is a ricequeen and he was living right nearby a residency that I had in Los Angeles in 2006. During this residency, I had to give a talk about my work, and the tradition was to send out an invitation to the neighborhood. It was on this occasion that Joe saw my name and recognized me as an Asian guy, so he decided to come check me out. Danh Vo, Untitled (America) (details) BSI Art Collection, Lugano, 2008 Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin
Andrea Vilani. «Danh Vo», Kaleidoscope, March 26, 2013. AV In another project you did for Frieze magazine, you did a travel reportage with Dominic Eichler and Thai photographer Pratchaya Phinthong on a journey to Vietnam s central highlands. Why did you go with them? I read that it was for the purpose of meeting «the indigenous and missionaries,» two expressions which are indeed potential sources of historical concepts and exotic fundamentalism Galerie DV Yes, it s something I m very interested in. The Central Highlands of Vietnam is an area where the indigenous people of Vietnam have lived for thousands of years, unnoticed by the Vietnamese because they lived in far reaches and deep forest. The Vietnamese always preferred the lowlands and the sea. So you really can see the imperial history of the Vietnamese in the landscape of Vietnam. The arrival of the French was the doom of the indigenous people because the highlands were ideal for coffee production, and also provided the perfect climate for the French. Cities were built high above sea level to imitate the French climate for the French colonists, who could then look after the plantations they ran with forced labor. The real tragedy came when the Vietnamese insurgency began, because insurgents would hide in the deep forest to fight against the imperial power. The indigenous people of Vietnam got totally fucked from all sides, and the final fuck was when the church arrived; while their land and culture were being taken away from them, the church was trying to save their souls. That is why I presented the saddle from the last missionary on horseback for the show I recently had at Zero in Milan called Last Fuck. Since I had done a lot of field work in this area, I really wanted somebody to come see it. I always found it difficult to deal with and represent this material; deciding to publish a text with Dominic was a way out, in many ways eliminating the need for producing an artwork. In the end, I guided him around and he wrote about his experience, and I chose the images that my colleague Pratchaya Phintong took during our trip. I think this project made a very big impact on all of us. It still disturbs us a lot.
Andrea Vilani. «Danh Vo», Kaleidoscope, March 26, 2013. Galerie Dahn Vo, Package Tour (detail), 2008 Courtesy: the artist and Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin AV Historically, the Orient has been perceived by Western people as a place where you can lose yourself. Think of the Hollywood imagery à la Shanghai Express
Andrea Vilani. «Danh Vo», Kaleidoscope, March 26, 2013. DV Before dark brown tans and cheap sex, there was really no good reason for people to go east. It was humid and wild- the place where the lions are. Mostly people would go because they hadn t achieved success in the West and were looking for another chance in the colonies. The exotic places have always been a garbage dump for Western leftovers from French architectural Modernism, experimented on in their colonies because it would be unimaginable to change the face of Paris, to today s sex tourism. People didn t go east because the landscape is beautiful; desperation pulled them there, and the exotic image was created to attract these desperate people. AV You once said that the most exotic thing is documentation itself, the way that our bodies are ruled by a sheet of paper. I am interested in how you use documentation. Galerie DV I call it my exotic desire to be normal. I said that in relation to the official papers that I am collecting. This is a collection of all the rights and privileges that donʹt belong to me getting married, having a Danish passport, being educated It s my secret desire to be normal. I like Homi Bhabhas «Almost white, but not quite.» AV How do you choose a particular story? I think exoticism is mainly about curiosity, desire and storytelling, a productive conflict between historical data and its fictionalization. DV Edward Said always returns to this Antonio Gramsci quote: «The starting-point of critical elaboration is the consciousness of what one really is, and is knowing thyself as a product of the historical processes to date, which has deposited in you an infinity of traces, without leaving an inventory.» It ends it with: «Therefore it is imperative at the outset to compile such an inventory.» I believe since the fabrication of reality always remains a fabrication, I can basically choose anything. How I do that depends on which leg comes out of bed first.
Roberta Smith. Awash in a Cultural Deluge The Hugo Boss Prize 2012, Danh Vo Works at the Guggenheim, The New York Times, 14 March, 2013. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/15/arts/design/the-hugo-boss-prize-2012-danh-vo-works-at-the-guggenheim.html?nl=todaysheadli nes&emc=edit_th_20130315&_r=1 Awash in a Cultural Deluge The Hugo Boss Prize 2012, Danh Vo Works at the Guggenheim by Roberta Smith Galerie Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times The Hugo Boss Prize winner Danh Vo has brought together thousands of artifacts and works that belonged to the artist Martin Wong, raising questions about cultural identity. Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times The Hugo Boss Prize 2012 Danh Vo has installed art and artifacts that belonged to the artist Martin Wong at the Guggenheim The exhibition as cornucopia as an overwhelming array of found objects selected and arranged by an artist has become something of a trend. You could call it the return of the repressed: a way for stringent conceptually motivated sensibilities to re-engage with materials and objects. The Hugo Boss Prize 2012: Danh Vo I M U U R 2 at the Guggenheim Museum is the latest example of these ready-made deluges. Organized by Katherine Brinson, an associate curator, it is also one of the best. Which doesn t mean your eyes won t occasionally glaze over. It has been conceived and orchestrated by Danh Vo (pronounced yon voh), an artist born in Vietnam who grew up in Denmark and is the 2012 recipient of the museum s biennial Hugo Boss Prize. (Its overlap with Asia Week is fortuitous.) His mostly lively, high-density Guggenheim installation is a homage to the artist Martin Wong (1946-99) that is consistent with Mr. Vo s self-effacing, shape-shifting art and his tendency to function as much as a curator or archaeologist as an artist. That said, it certainly runs counter to his penchant for spare, ephemeral works. The installation consists of nearly 4,000 frequently small artworks, artifacts and tchotchkes that once belonged to Wong, crowded into a specially designed gallery lined with handsome laminated plywood shelves. The show s open-armed Whitmanesque title I am you and you are too appeared on Wong s calling card. A denizen of the East Village during its art heyday of the 1980s and early 90s, Wong was known for meticulously realist, implicitly spiritual paintings of the harsher, sadder side of Loisaida life. In the mid-90s AIDS forced him to return to California, where he lived out his last years with his parents in San Francisco. Less well known is the fact that he seems to have been an obsessive accumulator, with an omnivorous, erudite eye; broad tastes; and a sharp sense of an object s social and cultural connotations.
Roberta Smith. Awash in a Cultural Deluge The Hugo Boss Prize 2012, Danh Vo Works at the Guggenheim, The New York Times, 14 March, 2013. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/15/arts/design/the-hugo-boss-prize-2012-danh-vo-works-at-the-guggenheim.html?nl=todaysheadli nes&emc=edit_th_20130315&_r=1 (One of the show s many subtexts is the frequency of racial stereotypes in this case African-American and Chinese in popular culture. It also drives home a more diffuse point: Just about any small, mass-produced, glazed-ceramic animal or human is to some extent demeaning.) Wong was aided and abetted in what seems to have been a nearly lifelong buying spree by his mother, Florence Wong Fie. Their acquisitions included everything from ancient jade or ivory archer rings to dusty campaign buttons; from Disney characters in various materials and scales to original cartoons by Clay Wilson and Victor Moscoso; from sheets of Chinese, Arabic and Tibetan calligraphy to numerous printed cards, booklets and books. There is a circular feng shui compass as well as Wong s drawing of one; an ordinary lamp with a ceramic Chinese sage for a base that appears in a very early painting of Wong s that is also on view; and a whiteglazed porcelain figure of a many-armed Indian Hindu goddess, a Mother s Day gift to Mrs. Wong Fie, still in its box, which her son inscribed to A little lady that always has her hands full. Some of the more valuable items were sold when money was short, including a Mondrian drawing and a Warhol Campbell s Soup box; and others were given to museums and other institutions. But much remains including an excellent Japanese horse-eye plate and a charming little hanging scroll of an ink-and-brush landscape. Until recently Mrs. Wong Fie displayed it all, cheek to jowl, in her San Francisco house, where Mr. Vo first saw it three years ago, after buying one of Wong s paintings. Galerie Mr. Vo s effort has numerous precedents among recent New York museum exhibitions. In 2009 the Chinese artist Song Dong filled the Museum of Modern Art s atrium with Waste Not, which consisted of every single thing that his mother, who definitely had hoarding issues, had wedged into her tiny shacklike house, along with the house itself. Last fall the same space was stuffed to overflowing with a disorderly, dispiriting yard sale staged by the Conceptual pioneer Martha Rosler. The Guggenheim itself, in 2012, showed Asterisms by Gabriel Orozco, scores of often bulky items that had washed up on a beach in Mexico, carefully arranged according to color, material and function. (Also worth mentioning is an exhibition opening Friday at the Jewish Museum: In As It Were... So to Speak, the artist Barbara Bloom has furnished and accessorized five rooms with 276 objects she selected from the museum s collection.) Mr. Vo s installation has a head start on these efforts because these objects were preselected, gathered together by one artist s barrier-blasting passion for stuff. Ignoring distinctions between real and fake, old and new, kitsch and not, they challenge the eye and preconceived notions of taste, even as, again and again, they trace the trickle-down from high to low. They also form a rather personal self-portrait of Wong, especially when you factor in the small, loving and never-exhibited paintings he made as gifts for his parents. (Many feature symbols for his mother, a pair of dice showing the number seven; and his father, an eight-ball or a golf-club head.) The installation raises interesting questions: Is it an exhibition of individual artifacts or categories (the endless, often eye-glazing ceramic figures), spiced with the odd artwork? Or is it a single piece of art? And if so, whose? A collaboration of Wong, his mother and Mr. Vo? Or is it Mr. Vo s work alone? Its presence at the Guggenheim is his idea. In addition I M U U R 2 is consistent with Mr. Vo s penchant for assembling objects, images and documents to create ambiguous narratives about the fluidity of cultural identity and history and the ways these larger currents affect individual lives. A recent piece consisted of a chandelier, bought at an auction, that once hung in the lobby of the Hôtel Majestic in Paris, the site of some of the peace talks that eventually ended the Vietnam War. Mr. Vo s first New York gallery show, opening March 20 at the Marian Goodman Gallery on West 57th Street, will consist of personal effects from the estate of Robert McNamara, the defense secretary who played a large role in the escalation of the Vietnam War. Until now Mr. Vo s most robust piece by a mile and also his bestknown effort is We the People, some 300 irregular sculptures in hammered copper, each of which copies at
Roberta Smith. Awash in a Cultural Deluge The Hugo Boss Prize 2012, Danh Vo Works at the Guggenheim, The New York Times, 14 March, 2013. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/15/arts/design/the-hugo-boss-prize-2012-danh-vo-works-at-the-guggenheim.html?nl=todaysheadli nes&emc=edit_th_20130315&_r=1 actual size, bit by bit, the entire outer skin of the Statue of Liberty. These fragments have been shown in groups at numerous institutions. Eventually they will be distributed to museums around the world, signifying the spread, or the disintegration, of democracy or American imperialism. I M U U R 2 has a robustness all its own. It is certainly Mr. Vo s most colorful and encompassing work. It comes at you from all sides. Along the right wall a large shelf holds Wong s brushes arrayed in vases and pots accompanied by two little paintings of the parental symbols. Another shelf is dominated by hamburger-theme objects overseen by several little reliefs of cherubic African-American children. A third a little meditation on beautiful colors shared by very different objects contains a large faux Ming vase, surrounded by rather rough, painted-wood whirligigs of flowers and hands by Romano Gabriel (1887-1977), a self-taught artist who lived in Eureka, Calif. One of the best moments is an expansive display of sundry calligraphies, sprinkled with examples of graffiti art and Wong s own rigorously stylized script. Galerie To Mr. Vo s credit this show is about total visual immersion in numerous familiar motifs to ultimately mysterious effect. Aside from the opening text panel there is not a label in sight. You are utterly on your own, and furthermore you never know which combinations of objects are faithful to Wong s, or Mrs. Wong Fie s arrangements, and which were configured by Mr. Vo or his assistants. But you do get a sense of two artists raised in the West but with roots in Asia, talking to each other through this horde, ruminating and inviting us to ruminate on complex, contaminating ways cultures are manifest in objects. The Hugo Boss Prize 2012: Danh Vo I M U U R 2 is on view through May 27 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Avenue, at 89th Street; (212) 423-3500, guggenheim.org. This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: Correction: March 20, 2013 An art review on Friday about The Hugo Boss Prize 2012: Danh Vo I M U U R 2, at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan, an exhibition conceived by Mr. Vo, misstated the opening date of his first New York gallery show, at the Marian Goodman Gallery on West 57th Street. It is today, not Friday. The review also misidentified the city where the artist Martin Wong, to whom the Guggenheim exhibition pays homage, grew up. It is San Francisco, not Eureka, Calif. And the review described incorrectly the San Francisco residence of Mr. Wong s mother, where some of the works now in the exhibition were once displayed. It is a house, not an apartment.
Danh Vo, Winner of The Hugo Boss Prize 2012, Shows Off his Style, Art Centron, March 17, 2013. http://artcentron.com/?p=5108 Danh Vo, Winner of The Hugo Boss Prize 2012, Shows Off his Style Galerie ARTS & REVIEW Objects from the collection of Martin Wong. Photo: Heinz Peter Knes An exhibition of the work of artist Danh Vo (b. 1975, Bà Rịa, Vietnam), winner of the Hugo Boss Prize 2012, is presently on view at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Vo, whose work illuminates the entwined strands of private experience and collective history that shape our sense of self, is the ninth artist to win the prestigious biennial award, established in 1996 by Hugo Boss and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. The Hugo Boss Prize 2012: Danh Vo is organized by Katherine Brinson, Associate Curator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Emerging from a process of research, chance encounters, and delicate personal negotiations, Vo s installations unearth the latent connotations and memories embedded in familiar forms. The title of his Guggenheim exhibition, I M U U R 2, is derived from a formulation used by the artist Martin Wong (1946 1999) on his business cards and stamps. Vo has long been fascinated by the life and work of Wong, a visionary painter and beloved figure of New York s downtown art scene of the 1980s and 90s. After acquiring one of Wong s works, he struck up a correspondence with the artist s mother, Florence Wong Fie, and eventually visited her home in San Francisco. There, he discovered a remarkable collection of objects ranging from curios and tourist souvenirs to rare antique ceramics and scrolls of calligraphy, interspersed with numerous examples of Wong s paintings and works on paper. An obsessive collector with an astute eye for overlooked finds, Wong had collaborated with his mother since childhood to assemble an evolving constellation of artifacts a project that culminated during the last five years of his life, when he returned to his family home to undergo treatment for an AIDS-related illness. Giving equal weight to the rarified and the disposable, the collection expresses Wong s omnivorous desire to absorb and understand his cultural environment. Much of the collection focuses on exuberant Americana and sentimental keepsakes, but Wong also examined the problematic aspects of American popular history, creating clusters of objects that depict racist caricatures. At the time of his death in 1999, the collection had grown to cover almost every surface in the house, where it has been carefully preserved by Florence Wong Fie ever since. In this
Danh Vo, Winner of The Hugo Boss Prize 2012, Shows Off his Style, Art Centron, March 17, 2013. http://artcentron.com/?p=5108 installation, Vo has configured a selection of objects drawn from the Wong collection. Elucidating the affinities between the two artists, the gesture merges their individual processes through a creative exchange that transcends historical circumstances and challenges the traditional notion of the stable, authored artwork. In November 2012, a jury selected Vo from a group of six short-listed artists, including Trisha Donnelly, Rashid Johnson, Qiu Zhijie, Monika Sosnowska, and Tris Vonna-Michell. The award is given to an artist whose work represents a significant development in contemporary art and sets no restrictions in terms of age, gender, race, nationality, or medium. The 2012 jury was chaired by Nancy Spector, Deputy Director and Jennifer and David Stockman Chief Curator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, and included Magali Arriola, Curator, Colección Jumex, Ecatepec de Morelos, Mexico; Suzanne Cotter, Director, Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto, Portugal, and former Curator, Abu Dhabi Project, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation; Kate Fowle, Executive Director, Independent Curators International, New York; Nat Trotman, Associate Curator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; and Theodora Vischer, Senior Curator at Large, Fondation Beyeler, Basel. In the official award statement, the jury remarked: We have chosen to award the Hugo Boss Prize 2012 to Danh Vo in recognition of the vivid and influential impact he has made on the currents of contemporary art making. Vo s assured and subtle work expresses a number of urgent concerns related to cultural identity, politics, and history, evoking these themes through shifting, poetic forms that traverse time and geography. Galerie This year marks the ninth presentation of the Hugo Boss Prize at the Guggenheim Museum. Since its inception in 1996, it has been awarded to American artist Matthew Barney (1996), Scottish artist Douglas Gordon (1998), Slovenian artist Marjetica Potrč (2000), French artist Pierre Huyghe (2002), Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija (2004), British artist Tacita Dean (2006), Palestinian artist Emily Jacir (2008), and German artist Hans-Peter Feldmann (2010). Previous finalists have included Laurie Anderson, Janine Antoni, Cai Guo-Qiang, Stan Douglas, and Yasumasa Morimura in 1996; Huang Yong Ping, William Kentridge, Lee Bul, Pipilotti Rist, and Lorna Simpson in 1998; Vito Acconci, Maurizio Cattelan, Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, Tom Friedman, Barry Le Va, and Tunga in 2000; Francis Alÿs, Olafur Eliasson, Hachiya Kazuhiko, Koo Jeong-a, and Anri Sala in 2002; Franz Ackermann, Rivane Neuenschwander, Jeroen de Rijke and Willem de Rooij, Simon Starling, and Yang Fudong in 2004; Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla, John Bock, Damián Ortega, Aïda Ruilova, and Tino Sehgal in 2006; Christoph Büchel, Patty Chang, Sam Durant, Joachim Koester, and Roman Signer in 2008; and Cao Fei, Roman Ondák, Walid Raad, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul in 2010. Hugo Boss has provided critical support to many Guggenheim programs since 1995. In addition to the Hugo Boss Prize, the company has helped make possible retrospectives of the work of Matthew Barney (2003), Georg Baselitz (1995), Ross Bleckner (1995), Francesco Clemente (1999 2000), Ellsworth Kelly (1996 97), Robert Rauschenberg (1997 98), and James Rosenquist (2003 04); the presentation Art in America: Now (2007) in Shanghai; the Felix Gonzalez-Torres (2007) and Ed Ruscha (2005) exhibitions in the US Pavilion at the Venice Biennale; and the exhibition theanyspacewhatever (2008 09) at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. At the Venice Biennale in 2011, the fashion and lifestyle group HUGO BOSS was the lead sponsor of the Allora and Calzadilla exhibition in the US Pavilion. In 2011-2012 the company supported two international exhibitions of the Hugo Boss Prize winner Hans-Peter Feldmann.
Michele Robecchi. Living History Art in America, Issue 9, October 2012, p.123-127.
Michele Robecchi. Living History Art in America, Issue 9, October 2012, p.123-127.
Michele Robecchi. Living History Art in America, Issue 9, October 2012, p.123-127.
Michele Robecchi. Living History Art in America, Issue 9, October 2012, p.123-127.
Michele Robecchi. Living History Art in America, Issue 9, October 2012, p.123-127.
Michele Robecchi. Living History Art in America, Issue 9, October 2012, p.123-127.
Marlyne Sahakian, Danh Vo, artasiapacific, September/October 2012 Issue 80, p. 142
Mirjam Varadinis. Shattered Freedom, PARKETT No 90, 2012. pp.210-216.
Mirjam Varadinis. Shattered Freedom, PARKETT No 90, 2012. pp.210-216.
Mirjam Varadinis. Shattered Freedom, PARKETT No 90, 2012. pp.210-216.
Mirjam Varadinis. Shattered Freedom, PARKETT No 90, 2012. pp.210-216.
Mirjam Varadinis. Shattered Freedom, PARKETT No 90, 2012. pp.210-216.
Mirjam Varadinis. Shattered Freedom, PARKETT No 90, 2012. pp.210-216.
Mirjam Varadinis. Shattered Freedom, PARKETT No 90, 2012. pp.210-216.
Hilary M.Sheets. Lady Liberty, Inspiring Even in Pieces,The New York Times, September 23, 2012, p.23
Hilary M.Sheets. Lady Liberty, Inspiring Even in Pieces,The New York Times, September 23, 2012, p.23
Jennifer Allen, Remaking the Ready-Made, frieze, Issue 2, Autumn 2011.
Jennifer Allen, Remaking the Ready-Made, frieze, Issue 2, Autumn 2011. Galerie
Allen Jennifer, Readymade, neugemacht / Remaking the Ready-Made, Frieze, Automne 2011.
Allen Jennifer, Readymade, neugemacht / Remaking the Ready-Made, Frieze, Automne 2011.
Allen Jennifer, Readymade, neugemacht / Remaking the Ready-Made, Frieze, Automne 2011.
Allen Jennifer, Readymade, neugemacht / Remaking the Ready-Made, Frieze, Automne 2011.
Allen Jennifer, Readymade, neugemacht / Remaking the Ready-Made, Frieze, Automne 2011.
Allen Jennifer, Readymade, neugemacht / Remaking the Ready-Made, Frieze, Automne 2011.
Allen Jennifer, Readymade, neugemacht / Remaking the Ready-Made, Frieze, Automne 2011.