Skip to main content


The French Academy in Rome - Villa Medici 
Presents

DANH VO 
& 
CHUNG GA OPLA 

We The People (detail), (2011-2013) - Photo Nils Klinger

The solo exhibition of Danh Vo – Chung ga opla at Villa Medici from 11 January to 10 February 2013 – is the second in a series of exhibitions focusing on the theme of Academia curated by Alessandro Rabottini.

Born in 1975 in Saigon, Danh Vo has affirmed himself in only a few years as one of the most original voices in the International artistic panorama, thanks to the variety of idioms with which he treats the great themes of history - colonialism, economic and cultural imperialism, the relations between East and West and war - from a personal point of view.

His work combines autobiography with the narration of great events, thus disintegrating the great division between History and personal history, between the dimension of individual experience and the horizon of world events.  

At the age of four, Danh Vo and his family escaped from Vietnam to find refuge in Denmark, following the historical events involving his native country as well as his own family. War, the subdivision of ex-Indochina, the French conquest and conversion to Catholicism… these and other collective traumas are omnipresent in Danh Vo’s work: a constant fusion between past and present, violence and poetry, destruction and transformation.

We The People (detail), (2011-2013) - Photo Nils Klinger


In his installations of objets trouvés and manipulated objects, the artist develops a formal idiom with references to post-minimalist art and Arte Povera, ethnographic and archaeological museology, commercial display and theatrical space.

On the occasion of his exhibition at Villa Medici, Danh Vo will create a series of installations in collaboration with members of his family.  The intimacy of this situation contrasts with the monumentality of the context that plays host to the exhibition: a fusion of everyday life with the official character amplified by the title.  Chung ga opla, is the phonetic translation of the Vietnamese expression indicating « sunny side up» eggs (in French « œufs au plat »). It evokes the image of morning food-sharing as a ritual celebrating unity.

The exhibition at Villa Medici will mix existing works with new pieces expressly created for this unprecedented project conceived specifically for the French Academy in Rome.

The exhibition Danh Vo - Chung ga opla is part of a cycle of three personal exhibitions that constitute an extension of the Teatro delle Esposizioni #3, which took place at Villa Medici in June and October of 2012. This cycle investigates the concept of Academy as a symbolic space where the idea of the presumed neutrality of art is superimposed on the concept of National identity and within which the dimensions of history, tradition, politics and culture come together.

The three artists involved in the project - each with his personal idiom - investigate the History of Art conceived as an area crossed by multiple forces: political ideologies, economic events, dominant historical narrations repressed by collective consciousness.

The exhibition Danh Vo - Chung ga opla follows Patrizio Di Massimo’s project The Lustful Turk (23 November – 16 December) and anticipates the solo show of Victor Man planned for the end of June 2013.

Bowditch Alphabet, 2010 - Photo Nils Klinger

This cycle of exhibitions explores the concept of Accademia in its multiple meanings interlacing historical, aesthetical and political reflections. 

Indeed, in recent years the international artistic debate has concentrated on a series of themes related to the processes of education and transmission of knowledge, the survival of ideologies of the past in the world of today and the possibility that visual art can work as an area where progress and anachronism can melt together.  Thus the concept of Accademia becomes a prism in which it is possible to manifest the opportunities and contradictions of our times in relation to tradition.  The figure of the Academy can, therefore, be explored as a physical, cultural and metaphoric site where the transmission of specific artistic knowledge bears a more complex history, consisting of a world vision which evokes, more or less explicitly, the traumas of history and the repression of ideology.

Danh Vo (1975, Saigon, Vietnam.) who lives and works in Berlin and New York, has recently  won the prestigious Hugo Boss Prize (2012). Part of the award consists in a solo exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York scheduled in March 2013. Also forthcoming in 2013: solo shows of the artist at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and at the Museion in Bolzano.  Solo exhibitions have also been dedicated to Danh Vo in prestigious institutes such as the Renaissance Society in Chicago, the National Gallery in Copenhagen, the Kunsthaus Bregenz (all in 2012); the Kunsthalle Fridericianum in Kassel (2011); the Kunsthalle Fridericianum in Kassel (2011); the Kunsthalle in Basel  (2009) and the  Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (2008).


DANH VO, CHUNG GA OPLA 
French Academy in Rome - Villa Medici
curated by Alessandro Rabottini
Opening 10 January 2013
h 6.30 pm - 8.30 pm 
Grandes Galeries
Viale Trinità dei Monti 1, Rome
www.villamedici.it
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ornella Muti: Five decades of Acting and Still Going Strong

Ornella Muti was born Francesca Romana Rivelli in Rome in 1955 to a Neapolitan father and an Estonian mother. She began her career as a model during her teenage years and made her film debut in 1970 with “La Moglie più bella” (The Most Beautiful Wife).  Her follow-up role was in the 1971 film, “Sole nella pelle” (Sun on the Skin), in which she played the daughter of wealthy parents who runs off with a hippie they don’t approve of. The film offers a telling journey through Italian society in the seventies, with its political climate, breathtaking seaside, and the styles and cars of that time.  Much of the film is set amid the sunny Italian seaside and captures the innocence and beauty of first love.   Muti made her American film debut in 1980 with "Flash Gordon." She played the role of Princess Aura. She’s appeared in two other American films, including “Oscar,” directed by John Landis and starring Don Ameche, Chazz Palminteri, and Sylvester Stallone. In 1992, she w...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Anthology Film Archives Presents: The Italian Connection: Poliziotteschi and Other Italo-Crime Films of the 1960s and '70's

June 19 – June 29 Influenced both by 1960s political cinema and Italian crime novels, as well as by French noir and American cop movies like "Dirty Harry" and "The French Connection," many Italian filmmakers in the late-60s and early-70s gradually moved away from the spaghetti western genre, trading lone cowboys for ‘bad’ cops and the rough frontier of the American west for the mean streets of modern Italy. Just as they had with their westerns, they reinvented the borrowed genre with their inimitable eye for style and filled their stories with the kidnappings, heists, vigilante justice, and brutal violence that suffused this turbulent moment in post-boom 1970s Italy. The undercurrent of fatalism and cynicism in these uncompromising movies is eerily reminiscent of the state of discontent in Italy today. ‘The Italian Connection’ showcases the diversity and innovation found in the genre, from the gangster noir of Fernando Di Leo’s "Caliber 9" ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Model/Actress Anna Falchi

Anna Falchi was born Anna Kristiina Palomaki, on April 22, 1972, in Tampere, Finland. Her mother, Kaarina Palomaki Sisko, is Finnish, while her father, Benito "Tito" Falchi, is from Romagna, Italy. Growing up in Italy, Anna was a tomboy, and had a fervent imagination. She is known mostly for her prolific career in modelling. However, she tried her hand at acting and landed a role in one of my favorite Italian comedies, Nessun messaggio in segreteria . I consider it my one of my favorites because it brought together so many amazing, talented filmmakers during a time when they were all just starting out. Those filmmakers, Pierfrancesco Favino, Valerio Mastandrea, Luca Miniero and Paolo Genovese are now huge names in contemporary Italian cinema, so it's great to look back and see their work in a low-profile film completely different from the bigger-budget stardom they now know.   Watch the trailer . Anna Falchi started her career as a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ettore Scola explores enduring friendships and lost ideals in 'C’eravamo tanto amati'

A scene from "C'eravamo tanti amati" Mixing both tragedy and humor, Ettore Scola ’s 1974 film “C’eravamo tanto amati” (“We All Loved Each Other So Much”) follows 30 years in the lives of three men and the woman they each adore. By examining how his generation changed after the war, Scola makes a film that reflects its era. Scola explores the moral, political and emotional evolution of Italy’s postwar generation and, in doing so, creates a film that is a chronicle of its time and a love letter to cinema. The story begins in the aftermath of World War II. Three friends — Antonio ( Nino Manfredi ), Gianni (Vittorio Gassman) and Nicola (Stefano Satta Flores) — emerge from the Italian Resistance with a shared dream of justice, equality and social renewal. They are united by their hope that the sacrifices of war will lead to a better world. But the decades that follow prove to be challenging as Italy undergoes massive social changes, from the postwar economic boom to the politi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Federico Fellini: A Look into the Life and Career of an Icon

A Fellini family portrait  “The term became a common word to describe something on the surface you can say is bizarre or strange, but actually is really like a painter working on a film,” said Martin Scorsese when asked to define “Felliniesque,” an adjective inspired by one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. The oldest of three children, Federico Fellini was born in the seaside town of Rimini in 1920. His father was a traveling salesman, so his mother was left to do the bulk of raising the children. One can argue that Fellini was born for his destiny. “You could tell that even as a child, he was different and unique. He was very intelligent, well above average. He was always the one to organize things, direct the others, make up games. He could control the other kids with just a look, said Fellini’s sister, Maddalena, in an interview with journalist Gideon Bachmann.  Not only was Fellini directing the children, but he was also putting on shows and charging ...
Post a Comment
Read more