One hand clapping guggenheim asia one plus#

Once again, though, things are less innocent than they appear. Like the handwriting, it attests to a peace with the world he would be hard pressed to emulate. Tibetan monks executed a fair share of Catholics, and Vo's father transcribes a last letter, too. They appear in a photograph, and their botanical studies have become wall drawings. He also creates a brief history of Catholic missionaries in Asia in the nineteenth century. He collects fragments from medieval sculpture in wood, and that grave marker is a cross. Vo dedicates himself to family in another way through its religion. His father etched the show's title in a window facing the street as well. His father also transcribed that interview-in a cursive that the viewer, like Vo, can only admire. The older man's most cherished objects have become his.

One hand clapping guggenheim asia one plus#

He displays his father's Rolex, plus a certificate of repair, and the battered engine from his father's Mercedes. He returns more often still to his father, who has become a collaborator. He returns more than once to his grandmother, with a seated photograph and a grave marker. He is obsessed enough with all three to have acquired quite a historical record. More broadly, he appears through those proxies of family, country, and dispersal. He includes, too, a transcript of an interview him, covering sixty sheets. He includes wood and chains collected outside his home. He includes his marriage and divorce certificates from two marriages now. He also sees that meaning as wrapped up in the uneasy zone between individual and collective memory-much like meditation and new media in 'One Hand Clapping.' Family, religion, and countryĪctually, Danh (pronounced 'yahn') Vo appears everywhere in his retrospective, if not in person. Where others might see refugees, he sees dispersal, much like the dispersal of art objects and their meaning into the world. Make that countries, for Denmark accepted them soon enough, and Vo calls himself a Danish artist like Maja Lisa Engelhardt to this day, although he divides his time between Berlin and Mexico City. And what appears strictly personal is caught up in the wider arena of family and country. Vo's work is like that: what at first appears merely puzzling has a story to tell, and what appears innocent rarely is. He might, that is, but for one thing: they were boat people from Vietnam, in a refugee camp in Singapore with, as yet, nowhere to go. He might have slipped this in about halfway up the ramp, as a welcome relief from more imposing objects and thoughts. And Vo might have cherished this one copy for nearly forty years, for the fond memories of a joyful season and the innocence of youth. He might have sent the card to all his friends, along with a wish that they were here. It comes with a greeting, for a merry Christmas and a happy new year. Vo appears modestly enough at that, as a child of four in a family photo from 1979. And the artists from Greater China in ' One Hand Clapping' turn up not at all. In New York City Danh Vo and One Hand Clappingĭanh Vo appears just once in his retrospective, 'Take My Breath Away' at the Guggenheim.