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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.
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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.
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Danh VoUntitled, 2022Pencil on paper and C-print, writing by Phung VoGroup of 13, each:
42 x 29.7 cm | 16 9/16 x 11 11/16 in.
45 x 32 x 3.7 cm | 17 11/16 x 12 5/8 x 1 7/16 in. (framed) -
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Danh VoUntitled, 2022Pencil on paper and C-print, writing by Phung Vo42 x 29.7 cm | 16 9/16 x 11 11/16 in.
45 x 32 x 3.7 cm | 17 11/16 x 12 5/8 x 1 7/16 in. (framed)FIND OUT MORE -
Danh VoUntitled, 2022Pencil on paper and C-print, writing by Phung Vo42 x 29.7 cm | 16 9/16 x 11 11/16 in.
45 x 32 x 3.7 cm | 17 11/16 x 12 5/8 x 1 7/16 in. (framed)FIND OUT MORE -
Danh VoUntitled, 2022Pencil on paper and C-print, writing by Phung Vo42 x 29.7 cm | 16 9/16 x 11 11/16 in.
45 x 32 x 3.7 cm | 17 11/16 x 12 5/8 x 1 7/16 in. (framed)FIND OUT MORE
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© Isamu Noguchi © INFGM \ ARS
Isamu Noguchi’s paper Akari lamps have been introduced to illuminate both the objects around them and spaces they inhabit. An itinerant cultural synthesizer, Noguchi’s iconic lights were based on Japanese lanterns and influenced by American design aesthetics. The forms, made using paper from the mulberry tree and taking multiple different shapes, are a prime example of Noguchi’s ability to bridge the traditional and the modern, a characteristic shared by Vo and Park.
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‘Meaning’ is not a quality objects have, it is something that we give them. Each of us looks at things differently depending on our baggage. This is how tension is created between objects but also people and environments.’
- Danh Vo -
Park Seo-BoEcriture No. 190512-21, 2021Mixed media with Korean Hanji paper on canvas165 x 260 cm | 64 15/16 x 102 3/8 in.FIND OUT MORE
Park Seo-Bo is widely acknowledged as the father of the influential Korean post-war movement Dansaekhwa, a form of abstraction which ran in parallel with Western Modernism. Rather than a repudiation of the past, Park seeks a connection with the historical through cultural practices; he uses Hanji paper and is also informed by the art of calligraphy, as is Vo.
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Park Seo-BoEcriture No. 100427, 2010Mixed Media with Korean hanji paper on canvas112 x 145.3 cm | 44 1/8 x 57 3/16 in.FIND OUT MORE
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Park Seo-BoEcriture No. 120218, 2012Mixed media with Korean Hanji paper on canvas170 x 130 cm | 66 15/16 x 51 3/16 in.FIND OUT MORE
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Park Seo-BoEcriture No. 090830, 2009Mixed media with Korean Hanji paper on canvas130 x 195 cm | 51 3/16 x 76 3/4 in.FIND OUT MORE
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Park Seo-BoEcriture No. 220105, 2022Acrylic on ceramic91 x 73 cm | 35 13/16 x 28 3/4 in.FIND OUT MORE
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Park Seo-BoEcriture No. 220125, 2022Acrylic on ceramic73 x 91 cm | 28 3/4 x 35 13/16 in.FIND OUT MORE
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Park Seo-BoEcriture No. 220101, 2022Acrylic on ceramic91 x 73 cm | 35 13/16 x 28 3/4 in.FIND OUT MORE
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Park’s meditative practice, rooted in spiritual traditions, achieves minimalism not through reduction, but through accretion via sustained, repetitive actions. This layering, both temporal and cultural, informs the work of each of the artists, and equally, this unique museum-mansion.
Park Seo-BoEcriture No. 22-77, 1977Pencil and oil on hemp cloth130.2 x 195.3 cm | 51 1/4 x 76 7/8 in.FIND OUT MORE -
© the artist. Photo © White Cube (Francesco Allegretto)
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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.
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To enquire about any of the works in this exhibition
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