Beschreibung:

3 Danh Vo We the People (detail) 2011 copper, 6 parts 15 3/4 x 129 7/8 x 23 5/8 in. (40 x 330 x 60 cm)
Provenance Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris Exhibited Kassel, Kunsthalle Fridericianum, DANH VO, JULY, IV, MDCCLXXVI, October 1 – December 31, 2011 Copenhagen, National Gallery of Denmark, Danh Vo, We The People (detail), June 1, 2012 - August 1, 2013 Video DANH VO 'We the People (detail)', 2011 "Taken as a whole, Danh Vo's 'We the People' project is perhaps one of the most insightful and certainly one of the most interesting projects to emerge in contemporary art in the beginning of the 21st century." Benjamin Godsill, Contemporary Art Specialist discusses Vo's groundbreaking initiative to recreate the Statue of Liberty and the significance of 'We the People (detail)', 2011 that is included in our Contemporary Art Evening Sale. Catalogue Essay “The image of it [The Statue of Liberty] is stronger than the physical materiality of it.” Danh Vo, 2011 Danh Vō’s immersive project We the People (detail), 2011, seeks to dis-assemble the iconic and monumental Statue of Liberty into 400 uniquely crafted copper pieces. Working with fabricators in Shanghai, Vō recreates what he terms “the skin [copper sheathing]” of the statue. The present lot depicts the six copper links removed from Lady Liberty’s ankle. The chain, which appears at the foot of the statue, has been severed from its bolt, encapsulating the very essence of freedom for which she stands. Here, the shackles of the chain are rendered in a beautiful copper and with a subtle delicacy. Seeing the chain removed from its captive lends the work a sort of elegance and levity, as the links tumble over one another. It sits gracefully on the floor, standing in great contrast to the confinement and freedom it symbolizes. Vō explained to the Wall Street Journal that in choosing the State of liberty he "wanted to do something that everyone had a relationship to, and make it a bit unfamiliar. It's kind of like creating a Frankenstein that gets its own life." (K. Ramisetti, Exhibition in New York Gives New Perspective on Statue of Liberty, Public Art Fund's 'Danh Vō: We the People' Gives Viewers a More Intimate, Abstract Look at Statue, The Wall Street Journal, May 15, 2014) Vō admits that he had never seen the Statue of Liberty before embarking upon this project. The artist, an immigrant from Vietnam, fled at the tail end of the war in 1979 with his family. The ship upon which they were traveling was intercepted by a Danish tanker and redirected to a Singaporean island. Taking the tanker as a sign, his family ultimately settled in Copenhagen a year later where V¬¬ō spent his childhood and youth. Vō’s ability to repurpose and re-contextualize that which is already known or established can be understood to grow directly from his early years growing up in Denmark. As in any situation, it often requires the fresh perspective of an outsider, or at least one who is best able to think “outside the box” in order to fully appreciate the opportunities or solutions given therein, and Vō’s practice, in its many iterations and manifestations, does exactly that. As he himself has stated with regards to We the People (detail), “I thought it would be a great challenge to take an image that everyone has some idea about and twist it. Do something to it. It’s more of a challenge than a goal…When Bartholdi created the Statue of Liberty he created an image and a political agenda. What I'm doing with it is a shift of scale and shift of meaning." (Danh Vō, “Danh Vō – We the People,” Statens Museum for Kunst, SMK TV, 2011) Vō’s practice is almost universally grounded by the idea of utilizing items of cultural and historical import to new and exciting ends. His perspective, and perception, is unflinching in its desire to uncover the latent energy inherent in these things and to release them in new and profound fashions. In addition to mining Bartholdi’s Statue of Liberty, itself modeled on historical examples ranging from the Colossus of Rhodes to more domestically scaled Greek and Roman sculptures of emperors and g