In the almost 15 years after his death, Wong’s work wasn’t as well known as it is today. Wong was a queer painter associated with the 1980s East Village art scene who died in 1999 of AIDS-related causes. He famously did so in 2013, when, as part of a show held on the occasion of winning the Guggenheim Museum’s Hugo Boss Prize, he exhibited a collection of ephemera and artworks related to Martin Wong. I hope that it’s personal.”Īs it happens, this is not the first time that Vo has offered up others’ art for his own shows. I mean, why should we try to make sense of it? What we can do is try to get a grip on what our daily life means and what the society we live in today expresses. I think we live in a world that doesn’t make sense. Courtesy the artist and White CubeĪsked to explain the similarities between his own life and work and those of Park and Noguchi, Vo demurred, saying, “We have a tendency to try to make sense of things. Vo’s conceptually minded objects feel far removed from both oeuvres.ĭanh Vo’s new works are untitled and feature photographs of flowers in his garden.

Park paints understated abstractions that have won him fame in South Korea. Noguchi made sculptures and design objects that are sleek and elegant, with plenty of allusions to the art of Japan, where his father was born. On the surface, none of the three contemporary artists have much in common, other than that they are all of Asian descent and represented by White Cube gallery (which was an organizer of the show). Working with the space’s curator Chiara Bertola, Vo organized the exhibition, which has been designated a “living archive” by the two. (Occasionally, there are also exhibitions of contemporary art there.) This week, those centuries-old paintings will be in the company of much newer works by Vo, as well as the late modernist sculptor and designer Isamu Noguchi and painter Park Seo-bo, who recently celebrated his 90th birthday. Vo was speaking from Venice, where he was at work installing a show at the Fondazione Querini Stampalia, an art space known primarily for its holdings of Baroque and Rococo art. from NYC to Restore the Celebrated Sculptor's Queens Studio A Rising Filmmaker Accomplishes the Rare Feat of Showing at Both Documenta and the Venice Biennale

Its a living art