Rising art star Danh Vo doesn’t believe in providing explanatory material. Several of his works combine sections of sculpture from different periods: a medieval, weather-beaten, wooden bust, for instance, fused to a Roman marble torso, atop a minimalist steel plinth – sort of like an art-historical version of that ‘Exquisite Corpse’ game of drawing composite body parts. And the cultural mash-up continues with two large, though barely visible, text-pieces, where phrases about ownership and identity have been lightly pencilled on to the gallery floor using ornate, Gothic script. But you’re pretty much left on your own when it comes to deciphering them. Google helps.
Of course, notions of cultural borrowing and historical recycling are par for the course in a lot of contemporary art. In Vo’s case, though, they become elevated to a kind of talismanic activity, or a personal ideology. Born in South Vietnam before fleeing during childhood with his family to Denmark, Vo takes as his subject ideas to do with migration and freedom, and the way that values mutate and fluctuate across times and cultures. Thus, in the main installation, flattened cardboard boxes hanging from the ceiling have been decorated with gold-leaf American flags, while suspended alongside are various types of rusting, old-fashioned farming tools – think of it as an object lesson about status, about ephemeral items becoming valuable while functional articles end up outmoded.
This is Vo’s first commercial gallery show in the UK, and it’s a slightly skimpy selection for such a large space – meaning that occasional works feel a bit too atomized. On the whole, though, the puzzles he presents are fascinating. An artist definitely worth trying to get your head around.
Gabriel Coxhead