The plush trappings of power, stripped down and isolated: this seems to be one of the themes and strategies of Danh Vo’s show “Mother Tongue” at Marian Goodman Gallery. The title comes from a small calligraphic drawing by the artist’s father, Phung Vo, who, while not knowing the language he...
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The 2011 Singapore Biennale, under the artistic direction of Matthew Ngui and curators Russell Storer and Trevor Smith, gathers sixty-three artists from thirty countries in four different venue locations: the Old Kallang Airport, the National Museum of Singapore, the Singapore Art Museum, and Marina Bay. It is one of the more agreeable Asian biennial experiences I have had in a while, perhaps a result of its well-paced and smooth organization, with artworks clearly...
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Danh Vo became known through a number of maverick projects. For his solo show "Not a Drop but the Fall" (2005) in gallery Klosterfelde, Vo duped both the Danish Art Council and his former boyfriend Michael Elmgreen into unwittingly supporting a fake application. Under the name of the famous art-duo Elmgreen & Dragset, he received funding to travel to Marfa, Texas, and document the opening of their Prada shop project, which he later showed together with the scam's paper...
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