Danh Vo
14 Apr - 19 May 2012
DANH VO
Herzlich Willkommen
14 April - 19 May 2012
Last year, building on his highly specific conceptual oeuvre, Danh Vo worked out an artistic project dealing with the American Statue of Liberty, that he then presented first at the Fridericianum Kassel. The large-scale spatial installation was entitled WE THE PEOPLE, the exhibition itself JULY, IV, MDCCLXXVI (the date of the American Declaration of Independence). It consisted of casts of the outer, copper skin of Lady Liberty which, as not all of them had been moulded as yet, were supplemented with neutral copper plates so as to hint at the colossal statue's actual weight. The artist explained that he had come up with the idea when he heard about how extremely thin the original's beaten copper skin was, namely a mere 2.4 millimetres.
Liberty is an abstract concept that, in many ways, also applies to the chequered history of the monumental sculpture. The freedom of one person is the exploitation of another. The fragments of liberty, as we might call the copper parts, may be assembled into the whole of Lady Liberty in our minds. Starting out from Kassel, these fragments travel to the New York New Museum, the Kunstraum Innsbruck, the Statens Museum for Kunst Copenhagen, the Wexner Art Center Ohio, Museion Bozen and other places, before arriving at the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris, where all the parts shall be assembled in 2012/2013. Paris, after all, was the place where the huge sculpture, designed by Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi in 1870, was shipped from in 1885.
Danh Vo, more than a year ago, invited himself to this exhibition in Innsbruck via Facebook. His idea to include Innsbruck as a place of freedom in his global WE THE PEOPLE project fell on open ears at the Kunstraum. Herzlich Willkommen, Danh Vo. Welcome, Liberty. Yet Danh Vo's spatial installations at all times are also visible emblems of his own history and his relationship to the real world, markers on a storyboard in which the artist hides behind readymades and documents. Thus the original chandelier from the Vietnam Conference in Paris (1973) or his grandmother's prize possessions – refrigerator, television set and crucifix – may serve as visible islands in the endless sea of relations. In the same way the fragments stopping off in Innsbruck are an expression of both a collective artistic idea and the appearance of individual artworks in the shape of readymades.
Danh Vo, born in Vietnam in 1975, grew up in Denmark. He studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen and the Städelschule in Frankfurt. He lives and works in Berlin. He has had exhibitions at, among other places, the National Gallery of Denmark (Copenhagen), the Artist Space New York, the Kunsthalle Basel, the Kunsthalle Fridericianum in Kassel, and the 6th Berlin Biennale. In 2007, he was awarded the blauorange art prize and nominated for the Preis der Nationalgalerie für junge Kunst in Berlin.
Herzlich Willkommen
14 April - 19 May 2012
Last year, building on his highly specific conceptual oeuvre, Danh Vo worked out an artistic project dealing with the American Statue of Liberty, that he then presented first at the Fridericianum Kassel. The large-scale spatial installation was entitled WE THE PEOPLE, the exhibition itself JULY, IV, MDCCLXXVI (the date of the American Declaration of Independence). It consisted of casts of the outer, copper skin of Lady Liberty which, as not all of them had been moulded as yet, were supplemented with neutral copper plates so as to hint at the colossal statue's actual weight. The artist explained that he had come up with the idea when he heard about how extremely thin the original's beaten copper skin was, namely a mere 2.4 millimetres.
Liberty is an abstract concept that, in many ways, also applies to the chequered history of the monumental sculpture. The freedom of one person is the exploitation of another. The fragments of liberty, as we might call the copper parts, may be assembled into the whole of Lady Liberty in our minds. Starting out from Kassel, these fragments travel to the New York New Museum, the Kunstraum Innsbruck, the Statens Museum for Kunst Copenhagen, the Wexner Art Center Ohio, Museion Bozen and other places, before arriving at the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris, where all the parts shall be assembled in 2012/2013. Paris, after all, was the place where the huge sculpture, designed by Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi in 1870, was shipped from in 1885.
Danh Vo, more than a year ago, invited himself to this exhibition in Innsbruck via Facebook. His idea to include Innsbruck as a place of freedom in his global WE THE PEOPLE project fell on open ears at the Kunstraum. Herzlich Willkommen, Danh Vo. Welcome, Liberty. Yet Danh Vo's spatial installations at all times are also visible emblems of his own history and his relationship to the real world, markers on a storyboard in which the artist hides behind readymades and documents. Thus the original chandelier from the Vietnam Conference in Paris (1973) or his grandmother's prize possessions – refrigerator, television set and crucifix – may serve as visible islands in the endless sea of relations. In the same way the fragments stopping off in Innsbruck are an expression of both a collective artistic idea and the appearance of individual artworks in the shape of readymades.
Danh Vo, born in Vietnam in 1975, grew up in Denmark. He studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen and the Städelschule in Frankfurt. He lives and works in Berlin. He has had exhibitions at, among other places, the National Gallery of Denmark (Copenhagen), the Artist Space New York, the Kunsthalle Basel, the Kunsthalle Fridericianum in Kassel, and the 6th Berlin Biennale. In 2007, he was awarded the blauorange art prize and nominated for the Preis der Nationalgalerie für junge Kunst in Berlin.