Danh Vo

Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris

Private Collection

Phillips New York, 14 May 2015, lot 2 (consigned by the above)

Acquired from the above by the present owner

“The past is ever present in Vo’s practice, and it is often ugly.” (James Meyer, Danh Vo, Artforum International, Summer 2018)

Having escaped post-war Vietnam with his family and settled in Denmark, Danh Vo is particularly conscious of the way in which global conflict pollutes not just people’s livelihoods but the personal associations with objects one encounters in his or her daily life. Vo alters the traditional definition of an artist; by utilizing a variation of readymade art in his practice, he acts as a historian and treasure hunter, teaching his viewers to look more closely at the unknown stories hidden in plain sight. During his 2009 residency at the Kadist Foundation in Paris, Vo was able to express the way in which material objects represent the choices that are made that affect the political climate. His experience in Paris, where multiple key decisions were made on the Vietnam War, challenged his preconceived perceptions about society. In subsequent years, he began exhibiting works like the tip of a pen used to sign the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution which represents the acceleration of the United States’ participation in the Vietnam War, and collateral participation in the uprooting of Vo family’s life. The artist gives cultural value, destabilizing previously held notions, to objects that seem are overlooked as frivolous or utilitarian. 

One of Danh Vo’s most important group of works is his We the People project for the Public Art Fund: a one-to-one replica of Frederic August Bartholdi’s Statue of Liberty completed in 2016. Using the same techniques and materials as the original structure, Vo procured 30 tons of copper to produce the 250 individual pieces for his replica; however, the artist never intended to fully construct it. Vo sought to “make something that people felt so familiar with, in all of the different ways that people project on the sculpture, and try to destabilize [one’s] own thinking of it.” (Hilarie M Sheets, Lady Liberty, Inspiring Even in Pieces, The New York Times, 20 September 2012). Straying from his readymade works, Vo cultivated the idea in Germany, manufactured it in China, and has displayed the pieces globally. Honing in on themes of cultural exchange, colonialism, and immigration, Vo challenges viewers to process the original meaning of the Statue of Liberty and individually interpret the meaning of freedom and its place in today’s globalized world.