Talk25 with Pham Thai Ho (Interview in German)
Gallery vlog #5
Opening: August 28, 3 – 9 pm
ZOOM-Opening: August 27, 7 pm
Duration: August 29 – October 16
Ending: October 16, 3 – 9 pm
Art and tattoos – although there are many points of contact, the visual arts and tattooing still belong to different worlds. In the course of time, tattooing increasingly rose from the role of a stigmata and turned into a mass phenomenon. Since the 1970s and 1980s, tattoos have also become an object of art, for example in performances with Valie Export or Timm Ulrichs, but there is still a great discrepancy in the evaluation of the classical arts and the craft of tattooing. Pham Thai Ho dares to build bridges in his works. The Berlin artist Pham Thai Ho, who comes from Vietnam, started tattooing while still studying at the Academy of Arts in Munich. As a graduate of the academy and established tattooist, he is part of both art worlds. As a tattoo artist he is always looking for new artistic expressions and thus raises tattooing out of its tradition as a craft. At the same time, the artist breaks new ground in art by placing tattoos and the accompanying social prejudices in the artistic discourse.
In four groups of works Pham Thai Ho deals with the field of tension between tattooing, art and society. For the group of works “Power Violence” the artist pasted “Dickpicks” from the Internet onto eight baseball bats. With these sculptures, Pham Thai Ho refers to his last series of paintings “Selfish Cocks”. Both series are critical of male dominance over women, but also of those who are generally physically weaker. The male member is presented as a cudgel that serves to humiliate others.
In his paintings, the artist makes use of works by well-known artists such as Egon Schiele or Rubens. He selects the areas with body parts from the paintings, prints them out and “tattoos” them with typical tattoo motifs. Afterwards he gives the final touch to the works in the tradition of the master stroke with an oil mixing technique. In this composition of classical masterpieces and typical motifs from the tattoo scene, Pham Thai Ho combines two opposing areas, lifts them out of their context and presents them as a new unity.
The installation “Only god can judge me” consists of a male and female rubber doll and an illuminated sign saying “only god can judge me”. Both dolls are covered with images of Adam and Eve from the visual arts using the adhesive tattoo technique. Sex, masturbation and tattoos – still taboos in our society – are associated with the Fall of Man.
In “The Eternal Chinese” Pham Thai Ho deals with racist experiences. The selfie printed on beer mats, in clichéd form with slit eyes and a nice smile, refers to the artist’s training as a brewer in a traditional Bavarian brewery. In this traditional teaching profession, the artist was repeatedly confronted with the themes of tradition and racism. The beer coasters with self-portrait are offered for sale in a vendor’s tray.
