Emergency Room

Opening: Wed 28 Oct, 12 am
Exhibition: 29 Oct – 20 Nov 2009, 9 am – 5 pm
Vietnam University of Fine Arts

Emergency Room is an art format, which has been launched successfully in big art-exhibitions in cities like Berlin, Athens, Copenhagen and New York, and the concept of the exhibition is that different and beforehand chosen artists, in an art space, will comment and reflect on present news and emergencies of their society. The concept is invented by the Danish/French artist Thierry Geoffroy.

Artists are thermometers for the society, and they have the visual expertise to present our society in a renewing and inspiring way. But in order to exhibit, an artist sometimes has to wait months or years in order to negotiate with art institutions, find funding and collaborators. The aim of the Emergency Room exhibition is to deal with these limits of art, and make it possible for the artist to respond to the contemporary, preventing their art work to be delayed comments on yesterday’s world.

Through Emergency Room, artists can react every day. They scan the emergencies of today and respond to their discoveries. By being a constantly changing exhibition space commenting on current events, Emergency Room creates a hotline to the public. Everyday there will be new reactions, and everyday there will be new reasons for audience to tune back in. The interactiveness of the exhibition creates an energetic force for both public and media.

The artists have been chosen by Thierry Geoffroy during a research visit in Vietnam in September, and all together more than 20 young and famous Vietnamese and Danish will participate in the project. Emergency Room artists deliberately choose to mix evidently different aesthetics; for instance cross-media artists with abstract painters or sculptors, and the artists chosen will be all meet each other on location, working together to meet their deadline. More in-depth the punctuality is a keystone when the artwork of yesterday daily at 12 pm is removed from the Emergency Room to give space for the artwork of today.

This event is part of the Happy Denmark program.