Take Ninagawa is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Danh Vo.

Vo’s newest works combine lithograph images with the calligraphy of his father, Phung Vo.
The textured images reproduce details cropped from five Renaissance and Baroque paintings. The calligraphy quotes lines from Regan, the demonically possessed child from the American supernatural horror film, The Exorcist (1973). Just as Regan ultimately survives her possession, Vo’s father, whose faith in Catholicism propelled his and his family’s escape from Vietnam to Denmark in 1979, also finds a way to free himself away from his son by innovating his own private Gothic script. In turn, Vo’s cropping of the Baroque paintings distances the image sources from their original function as a tool for Counter-Reformation. Made with an 18th-century technique that employs stone, oil, and water, the lithographs are printed on hand-torn cotton paper and achieve a visual tactility rivaling that of painting.

Biography
Born in 1975, Danh Vo studied at KADK—The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen and at the Städelschule in Frankfurt. He was awarded the Hugo Boss Prize in 2012 and the Blauorange Kunstpreis of the Deutsche Volksbanken und Raiffeisenbanken in 2007. Major exhibitions include the Bourse de Commerce–Pinault Collection, Paris (2023); Mudam Luxembourg (2021–22); Secession, Vienna (2021); the National Museum of Art, Osaka (2020); South London Gallery, London (2019); M+, Hong Kong (2018); Casa Luis Barragán, Mexico City (2018); “Take My Breath Away,” Guggenheim Museum, New York, and SMK, Copenhagen, (2018); Ng Teng Fong Roof Garden Commission series, National Gallery Singapore (2016–17); Palacio de Cristal del Retiro, Madrid (2015); and “I M U U R 2” (Hugo Boss Prize), Guggenheim Museum, New York (2013). Vo participated in the international art exhibition at the 55th (2013) and 58th (2019) editions of the Venice Biennale, and represented Denmark at the 56th Venice Biennale (2015) with the exhibition “Mothertongue.”