artgenève 2024 - YANNICK VU: Palexpo, booth D54

Olivier Varenne is proud to present a group of paintings by Vietnamese-French artist, Yannick Vu (b.1942).  

Works from 1994-1995 will be shown; an exploratory journey on paper of ambiguous elementary forms from combs, to totems, and breast-like forms, in altered dimensions, as well as mysterious landscapes. Through them Vu contrasts and converges dualities such as heaven and earth, the mundane and unique, Chthonian and Apollonian, physical and intellectual.

‘they are to do with my Oriental part… somehow these drawings are done in the same way; it’s very immediate, it’s like calligraphy, you have to breathe, you have to think, and then you jump, and at the same time with your soul, with your brain, with your body’.

Yannick Vu often collaborates on sculptures with her husband Ben Jakober, and earlier in her life she was both the assistant and wife of Domenico Gnoli (1933-1970). In both relationships Vu has been required to be part of a cooperative creative process – a challenge to an artist’s ego. 

A decisive moment occurred in the 1970s when an early painting by Vu was mistaken as being by Gnoli. On challenging the dealer, her skill was doubted and the affront inspired her to pick up her brush again to prove the dealer wrong: ‘Life is like that, sometimes you need some kind of accident to resume working.’ It lead to an exhibition in Paris.

Selected Biography

1942 - born in Montfort-L’Amaury, on the outskirts of Paris.

1962 - moves to Paris and participates in the Salon de la Jeune Peinture. Meets Domenico Gnoli (1933-1970) and Ben Jakober.

1963 - moves with Gnoli to Mallorca and works as his assistant.

1965 - marries Gnoli in New York.

1972 - travels in South America and marries Ben Jakober in Mexico.

1973 - starts a collection of C16th-19th portraits of children.

1975 - lives between French Polynesia and Mortitx, Mallorca.  Resumes painting and exhibits in Paris.

1980 - moves to Sa Bassa Blanca, Mallorca.

1982 - exhibits regularly with Galerie Isy Brachot in Paris and Brussels, and in Hamburg and New York.

1985 - series of charcoal drawings and oils on the theme of the self-portrait, exhibited in Palma.

1993 - invited with Ben Jakober to create and install a monumental work, Il Cavallo di Leonardo, at the entrance of the Venice Biennale.

The Fundación Yannick & Ben Jakober is founded.

1995 - Chthonian-Apollonian exhibited in modified form, Galerie Montenay, Paris.

1998 - On the Razor’s Edge, Mucsarnok Palace Kunsthalle, Budapest

2001 - participation in Altars and shrines of the world, Kunstpalast Dusseldorf (curated by Jean-Hubert Martin).

2012 - Flash-Back retrospective at the Pera Museum, Istanbul.