Danh Vo, who has been well-known with participation in 55th Venice Biennale, solo exhibition at Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris and the award from Hugo Boss Prize in 2012, opens the first solo exhibition in Japan.
His installation 'Qilin,' which means unicorn, The cardboard sculpture follows from a series of similar works made by applying gold leaf to cardboard boxes. His understanding is that apart from transforming the value of the box, which became worthless after it was emptied of its original contents, Danh is also interested in the modular side of the box form, which can be spread flat or reassambled into a three-dimensional form, stacked, etc. In this case Danh Vo decided to present the boxes as they would be bundled for garbage in Japan.
'2.2.1861' and 'Death of a Moth,' Both texts are hand copied by Danh's father in Denmark. The letter was written by the French missionary Théophane Vénard, on the eve of his execution for proselytizing in Vietnam. The other text is Virginia Woolf's essay the Death of a Moth. Danh's father does not understand French or English, but he was raised in Vietnam using Latin script and taught to have beautiful hand-writing, which was necessary to have a profession in Vietnam but became useless once he moved to Denmark.
At last, 'Wishbone,' the chicken skeleton uses a found skeleton that is strung up to evoke the meat hanging in a butcher's shop.
*image (left)
coutesy of the artist and Take Ninagawa, Tokyo
