Danh Võ
21 April - 24 June 2012
 | | Danh Võ
Installation view 2nd floor, Kunsthaus Bregenz
Photo: Markus Tretter
Copyright © Danh Võ, Kunsthaus Bregenz | | | |
 | | Danh Võ
Installation view 1st floor, Kunsthaus Bregenz
Photo: Markus Tretter
Copyright © Danh Võ, Kunsthaus Bregenz | | | |
 | | Danh Võ
Installation view 1st floor, Kunsthaus Bregenz
Photo: Markus Tretter
Copyright © Danh Võ, Kunsthaus Bregenz | | | |
 | | Danh Võ
Installation view 1st floor, Kunsthaus Bregenz
Photo: Markus Tretter
Copyright © Danh Võ, Kunsthaus Bregenz | | | |
 | | Danh Võ
Installation view 1st floor, Kunsthaus Bregenz
Photo: Markus Tretter
Copyright © Danh Võ, Kunsthaus Bregenz | | | |
 | | Danh Võ
Installation view 2nd floor, Kunsthaus Bregenz
Photo: Markus Tretter
Copyright © Danh Võ, Kunsthaus Bregenz | | | |
 | | Danh Võ
Installation view 2nd floor, Kunsthaus Bregenz
Photo: Markus Tretter
Copyright © Danh Võ, Kunsthaus Bregenz | | | |
 | | Danh Võ
Installation view staircase 2nd to 3rd floor, Kunsthaus Bregenz
Photo: Markus Tretter
Copyright © Danh Võ, Kunsthaus Bregenz | | | |
 | | Danh Võ
Installation view staircase 2nd to 3rd floor, Kunsthaus Bregenz
Photo: Markus Tretter
Copyright © Danh Võ, Kunsthaus Bregenz | | | |
 | | Danh Võ
Installation view 3rd floor, Kunsthaus Bregenz
Photo: Markus Tretter
Copyright © Danh Võ, Kunsthaus Bregenz | | | |
 | | Danh Võ
Installation view 3rd floor, Kunsthaus Bregenz
Photo: Markus Tretter
Copyright © Danh Võ, Kunsthaus Bregenz | | | |
 | | Danh Võ
Installation view 3rd floor, Kunsthaus Bregenz
Photo: Markus Tretter
Copyright © Danh Võ, Kunsthaus Bregenz | | | |
 | | Danh Võ
Installation view 3rd floor, Kunsthaus Bregenz
Photo: Markus Tretter
Copyright © Danh Võ, Kunsthaus Bregenz | | | |
 | | Danh Võ
Installation view 3rd floor, Kunsthaus Bregenz
Photo: Markus Tretter
Copyright © Danh Võ, Kunsthaus Bregenz | | | |
 | | Danh Võ
Sanyo, 2010
Gold on cardboard
1330 g
Unique
Photo: Jens Ziehe
Courtesy the artist, Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin, and private collection
© Danh Võ | | | |
 | | Danh Võ
Daily Active, 2010
Gold on cardboard
261 g
Unique
Photo: Nick Ash
Courtesy the artist, Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin, and private collection
© Danh Võ | | | |
 | | Danh Võ
Coca Cola, 2011
Gold on cardboard
315 g
Unique
Photo: Nick Ash
Courtesy the artist, Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin, and private collection
© Danh Võ | | | |
 | | Danh Võ
Boys Seen Through a Shop Window, 2009
C-print
48 x 64 cm
Unique
Photo: Joe Carrier, Cambodia 1972
Courtesy the artist, Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin, and private collection
© Danh Võ | | | |
 | | Danh Võ
Tombstone for Nguyen Thi Ty, 2009
Marble, granite, bronze, and wood relief
220 x 60 x 20 cm
Installation view
That’s the way we do it,
2nd floor Kunsthaus Bregenz 2011
Photo: Markus Tretter
© Danh Võ, Kunsthaus Bregenz | | | |
 | | Danh Võ
Oma Totem, 2009
Objects from the artist’s grandmother Nguyen Thi Ty: 26” Phillips television set, Gorenje washing machine, Bomann refrigerator, wooden crucifix, and personal entrance card for a casino, appliances received from “The Immigrant Relief Programme” and the crucifix from “The Catholic Church” upon her arrival in Germany in 1980
220 x 60 x 60 cm
Unique
Installation view
That’s the way we do it,
1st floor, Kunsthaus Bregenz 2011
Photo: Markus Tretter
© Danh Võ, Kunsthaus Bregenz | | | |
 | | Danh Võ
Good Life (Detail), 2007
Cultural Boys, Saigon, 1962
Black and white photo on wood
Dimensions variable
25 x 30 cm
Unique
Photo by Joe Carrier
Courtesy the artist, Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin, and private collection
© Danh Vo | | | |
DANH VÕ
Vô Danh
21 April - 24 June 2012
In his objects, installations, photographs, and works on paper Danh Võ combines personal experiences from his childhood in Vietnam with the story of his family, their flight to Europe, and questions of colonialism, migration, and cultural identity. A no less important topic of his works are same-sex relationships and, generally, a questioning of standardized patterns of behavior both in society in general and in the art context in particular. Over and over he succeeds in creating works of iconic power.
Danh Võ repeatedly draws on his own history and/or that of his family and involves close relatives in the production of his works, for instance his father Phụng Võ. Danh Võ’s installation at the last Berlin Biennale for example referenced his father. Here he presented in glass wall-cases the Rolex wristwatch his father bought from the gold left over from organizing the escape from Vietnam, the Dupont lighter bought with the first money he earned in his new homeland, and his signet ring. All three objects symbolize the yearning for the Western attributes of wealth, also their global range and presence.
It is not only in high-end consumer goods, however, that Danh Võ addresses the supposed attraction of the material values of the West. Products such as Coca Cola, as cited in his Bregenz exhibition in cartons with gold-leaf-printed wrappings, also tempt and hold out a promise of salvation according to the artist.
For Danh Võ, lettering, language, and work and exhibition titles have a significant role to play and add interpretative levels. This is true of his Bregenz exhibition: When Danh Võ and his parents were looking for his brother’s grave in a cemetery in Vietnam several years ago, he was profoundly shocked to read »Vô Danh« on a large number of the crosses and gravestones. This did not indicate the popularity of his name and a high mortality rate associated with it, though - in Vietnamese »Vô Danh« simply means »without name«: those buried there were unidentified. So when Danh Võ calls his Bregenz exhibition, with ostensible self-referentiality, Vô Danh, he follows the custom of naming an exhibition - yet he also undermines it by calling the exhibition nameless.
www.kunsthaus-bregenz.at
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