Fondazione Querini Stampalia in collaboration with White Cube has invited the Danish-Vietnamese artist Danh Vo to co-curate a project alongside Chiara Bertola, curator of the contemporary art programme at Querini Stampalia, to coincide with this year’s Venice Biennale. Placing his own works alongside that of the Japanese American sculptor Isamu Noguchi and Korean painter Park Seo-Bo, these artists engage in a complex dialogue with each other and with the architecture and rich array of past art on display at the Fondazione including the Intesa Sanpaolo Collection.

EXHIBITION TEXT (ENG/IT)

Making new stories from the fog of memory and the weight of history, Vo’s work with found objects and architectural spaces reveals a sensitivity to time, allowing the varied contexts to shape and alter the viewer’s perception. Vo has installed light and temporary walls throughout the space; agile structures that indicate a route and at the same time are responsive to the evolution of the building. Marking this ephemeral journey are the photographic portraits of flowers in Vo’s gardens. Taken with Vo’s smartphone, the images are printed in colour with the Latin names written in cursive script by the artist’s father, Phung Vo. In a new series of sculptures made in Murano, Venice, Vo has displayed warped and weathered wooden moulds together with their imperfect glass casts, a gesture which redefines the relationship between function and beauty.

The Fondazione Querini Stampalia is one of the city’s reference libraries. It’s not fortuitous that Vo brings his work here as a sort of living archive which changes whenever and wherever he exhibits it. Vo, Noguchi and Park are guests and intruders who alter our perceptions of objects that might otherwise be fixed. Each work returns the gaze of those open to seeing. Perhaps the reverse is also true: each gaze brings to the work a scintilla of light and life.