Such is the case with Võ’s solo show in Milan. The path of the artist is a mystery to the viewer until the completion of their visit. Therefore, the artist recommends an appropriate amount of time in order to completely discover and comprehend his works. The flow of the exhibition is not necessarily straightforward, rather it expands like a tree into the halls of the gallery. The exhibition itself becomes a meditative space, recalling the spirit of a Zen garden, designed to facilitate the reaching of transcendence.
If this interpretation is correct, the choice to eliminate signage and titles around the exhibition space proves even more significant, especially as visitors are not forced to follow instructions. Võ explains, “I tend to embrace the concept of instability and disturbance so the choice of not framing the exhibition in a title and not including a descriptive text is a way to offer the visitor the possibility to wander and observe the spaces of the gallery making his own assumptions and thoughts. The spectator is forced to contemplate radical incompleteness and, along with that, wonder how that came to be and ask what the future holds.”
The nameless show, made specifically for the gallery space, includes sculptures, objets trouvés, photogravure, and photography. Much of the exhibition echoes themes of detachment, abandonment, and fragmentation intertwined with a sense of strangeness. Everything is rendered with minimal means and great simplicity, appearing almost brutal in nature. The conception of a Zen garden, both vegetable and mineral, reveals a philosophical approach to gaze and reality.
“I dedicated a series of works to the flowers, in an effort to go back to a new form of simplicity, I decided to dedicate my energies to the beauty of flowers, growing a new garden around my studio at Güldenhof, my studio just outside Berlin, and challenging myself to get to know their names and being able to recognize them. Each flower is captured in a picture and labeled with its Latin name by the beautiful handwriting of my father in an encyclopedic perspective. For me nurturing the garden encompasses freedom and unpredictability and therefore becomes a practical and symbolic liberation in the creative process, overcoming all the traditional boundaries of the definition of art.”