Dinh Q. Lê (b. 1968) is best known for his sculptural, photographic, and video works which insists on deeper engagement with the way global crises are recorded and perceived. P∙P∙O∙W will be presenting a new sculpture from a series he began in 2009 that focuses on kinetic public life in Vietnam and the entrepreneurial spirit of a culture motivated by the pursuit of on economic parity with the rest of the globalized world. Gardens on the Move 2018, a bicycle retrofitted with a cargo rack and saddle bags filled with living plants, epitomizes the rolling retail displays of everyday consumer goods that have informally driven the country’s economic revitalization following the civil war with Laos and Cambodia. We will also present large-scale photo-weavings from his 2006 series Tapestries. Using flowers as the main motif, these works interweave symbols of mourning and celebration to represent Vietnam’s renewing energy after years of loss. As with all his woven photographs, these works evoke the idea that there is no true historic ‘moment,’ but rather that history is a complicated series of multifaceted narratives. Dinh Q. Lê holds an MFA in photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York. He participated in the 2013 Carnegie International at the Carnegie Museum of Art, PA, dOCUMENTA 13 in 2012; the 2009 Biennale Cuveê in Linz, Austria; the 2008 Singapore Biennale; and the 2006 Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, in Brisbane, Australia. His work has been exhibited at major institutions and international exhibitions including the Museum of Modern Art, NY; Carnegie Museum, PA; MoMA PS1, NY; the Museum of Contemporary Art, IL; The Museum of Fine Arts, TX; Tufts University Art Gallery, MA; and the Asia Society, NY, among many others. A major survey exhibition, Dinh Q. Lê: Memory for Tomorrow, was presented at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo in 2015. True Journey Is Return, a traveling retrospective, accompanied by a full-color catalog, will open at the San Jose Museum of Art in September, 2018. Lê lives and works in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, where he co-founded Sàn Art.

David Wojnarowicz (1954-1992) channeled a vast accumulation of raw images, memories, and lived experiences into a powerful visual language that was an undeniable presence in the New York City art scene of the 1970s, 80s, and early 90s. Through his several volumes of fiction, poetry, memoirs, painting, photography, installation, sculpture, film and performance, Wojnarowicz’s legacy affirms art’s vivifying power in a culture he viewed as alienating and corrosive. P∙P∙O∙W will present a selection of images from Arthur Rimbaud in New York, 1978-79/2004. In 1978, a 24 year old David Wojnarowicz took a series of photographs of a man wearing a paper mask bearing the face of Arthur Rimbaud, the French poet. The series has come to represent a brief period of innocence and indecency in downtown New York City – after Stonewall but before AIDS – rife with sex, drugs, art and material poverty. Complete portfolio of the 44 images which comprise this series are in the collection of the Reina Sofia Museum, New York Public Library, Dallas Museum of Art and Museum Ludwig. Wojnarowicz’s work has been included in solo and group exhibitions around the world, at institutions such as The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The American Center, Paris, France; The Busan Museum of Modern Art, Korea; Centro Galego de Art Contemporanea, Santiago de Compostela, Spain; The Barbican Art Gallery, London; and the Museum Ludwig, Cologne. His works are in permanent collections of major museums nationally and internationally and his life and work have been the subject of significant scholarly studies. Wojnarowicz has had retrospectives at the galleries of the Illinois State University in 1990, curated by Barry Blinderman and at the New Museum in 1999 curated by Dan Cameron. A third retrospective, David Wojnarowicz: History Keeps Me Awake at Night, co-curated by David Kiehl and David Breslin, will open at the Whitney Museum of American Art in July 2018.

Xiaoze Xie (b. 1966) is a realist painter, best known for his still lifes of rare and banned books from historic libraries around the world. For his recent series of Nocturne paintings, Xie focuses on observations of daily life, in particular, night scenes. On the Sidewalk (Guangzhou) 2016 presents an informal, urban economy – the sale of Nike and Adidas tennis shoes – in theatrical light, stage-like spaces, and enigmatic atmosphere. From carefully composed compositions captured with a sophisticated camera to simple snapshots taken with his iPhone, Xie’s paintings poetically document social conditions in transitional spaces. P∙P∙O∙W will also present a work from the series Forbidden Memories: Tracing Banned Books in China which explores the history of censorship, social memory and political discourse in China. Xie scoured libraries in China to photograph books and manuscripts historically banned due to their sexual content, or politically inflammatory material. Xie was born in 1966 in Guangdong, China and emigrated from the People’s Republic of China in 1992. His work has been widely exhibited in the U.S., Europe, and China and is included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Oakland Museum of California. Xie is a recipient of the Academic Award in Painting, The 3rd Nanjing International Art Festival, Nanjing, P. R. China (2016), the Painters and Sculptors Grant from the Joan Mitchell Foundation (2013), and a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (2003). Xie is the Paul L. & Phyllis Wattis Professor of Art at Stanford University. His work is currently the subject of an exhibition Eyes On: Xiaoze Xie at the Denver Art Museum on view through July 8, 2018.