2012 Catalogue Archive

Vietnamese-born artist Danh Vo explores questions of colonialism, migration, and cultural identity. By elegantly applying gold-leaf wrapping on cardboard, Vo creates works that he says “tempt and hold out a promise of salvation.” Here, the relationship between the gold-leaf application and the haggard cardboard box addresses the supposed attraction of Western material values by contrasting a valuable product and technique to a worthless migrating box of Chinese beer. Along with artists like Felix Gonzalez-Torres and David Hammons, Vo helps broaden the Eurocentric gaze by making socially sensitive and deeply charged works. Danh Vo’s work is currently the subject of the exhibitions We The People at the Art Institute of Chicago and Uterus at the Renaissance Society & Oriental Institute. In 2013, he will have a solo exhibition at the Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris that will travel to Museion in Bolzano, Italy. Selected solo exhibitions include the National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen; Damnatio Memoriae, CCS Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson; Kunsthaus Bregenz; Kunstraum Innsbruck; MD72, Berlin; and the National Museum for Art, Copenhagen. His work is in public collections at the Tate Modern, London; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen; and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Danh Vo lives and works in Berlin.