Danh Vō’s (Art)ifacts | Art in Print

Art in Print’s Nicole Meily reviewed Danh Vō’s solo exhibition ‘Take my Breath Away‘ at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. The exhibition is a collaboration between the Guggenheim and The National Gallery of Denmark, where it will be on display until 2 December 2018.

‘In the gravures, Vo employs eccentric cropping to similar ends, excising visual context. In 03.06.1965 (2015), for example, we see a curvilinear trail of silver tubing against black, only belatedly recognizing the white form to the left as part of an astronaut, floating out of the frame as he executes a space walk.3 Two stunning black-and-white gravures show, from different angles, a tense and rigid hand that can be recognized as that of Michelangelo’s David (1501–1504); a third shows the limp hand of the dead Christ in the sculptor’s Pietà (1498–1500). The rest of these masterpieces—the bodies themselves—are absent.

Vo was first drawn to photogravure when he saw the portfolio Deutsche Museen (2005) by the artistic duo Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset. Produced by the Copenhagen workshop of Niels Borch Jensen, and based on color photographs of empty contemporary museum spaces, the Elmgreen & Dragset series avoids the nostalgic quality that photogravure can carry. Vo’s first project with Niels Borch Jensen was the refugee camp Christmas photograph, a work similarly dislodged from expectation by the convergence of 20th-century photography and 19th century gravure.‘

Please find the full article on Art in Print’s website.