Notes from the Invisible Box of Valery Osser

2008-09, Re-published Da Vinci Code with added chapter (with 24K gold leaf edges), each cover unique
9 x 6 x 2 inches

754 pages

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The artist scanned in the entire Da Vinci Code (removing pages, authorship, titles, etc) and re-published it with a “lost chapter” inserted after the original’s chapter 79. The added chapter contains journal entries made by Marcel Duchamp (that Nguyen wrote), and only the edges of Nguyen’s chapter are gilded.

 

Notes from the Invisible Box of Valery Osser tells a convoluted story of myth and lost love. Rose and star, the two main symbols in the Da Vinci Code, also show up prominently in the real life of Duchamp – most notably Rrose Selavy, the artist’s alter ego, who might very well be the perfect representation of Dan Brown’s sacred entwinement of masculine and feminine. In my story, Rrose Selavy (an anagram of Valery Osser) is uncovered to be a real person who Duchamp loved, lost, and sublimated in his work.