Haegue Yang

Haegue Yang (Hangul: 양혜규) (born December 12, 1971) is a South Korean artist. She lives and works in Berlin and Seoul. Yang often uses standard household objects in her works, and tries to liberate them from their functional context, and apply other connotations and meaning to them.^[1] “Linguistic and didactic processes” are central features of her work.^[2] Much of Yang’s artworks attempt to provide sensory experiences through abstract narratives.

Biography

Yang was born in South Korea in 1971. Her father, Hansoo Yang, is a journalist and her mother, Misoon Kim, is a writer.^[3] Yang received her Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree (B.F.A.) in 1994 from the Seoul National University in Korea. In 1999, she received her masters at the Meisterschüler in Städelschule Frankfurt am Main in Germany. Yang is based in Berlin and Seoul, so she often travels between the two cities. Her main studio is located in Kreuzberg, Germany.

Career

After receiving her B.F.A., Yang moved to Berlin and began her artistic career in the late nineties. She is known for her creative use of the Venetian blinds in her works. She uses mundane objects and materials to create “complex and nuanced installations that are informed by poetry, politics, and human emotions”.^[4] Among her numerous art pieces, she has worked with laundry racks, decorative lights, infrared heaters, scent emitters, and industrial fans.^[5]

Yang is a contemporary artist exhibiting in various countries including the United States, France, Italy, England, Spain, China, and Japan. She dedicates most of her time creating new art pieces and working on exhibitions. She has also written and collaborated on many published works that correspond with the exhibitions she displayed. In 2013, Yang had seven solo shows on three different continents, three publications, and other group exhibitions in that year as well.^[6] Yang has participated in the 2006 São Paulo Biennial, the 55th Carnegie International in Pittsburgh, the 2008 Turin Triennale, represented South Korea in the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009, and participated in dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel, Germany in 2012.^[7] Yang’s first exhibition in the United States, titled Brave New Worlds, was at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 2007.^[8]

Exhibitions

Arrivals (2011)

For this solo exhibition, Yang occupied three floors of the gallery in Kunsthaus Bregenz. On the first floor, she exhibited past works including Fishing (1995), a small lacquer painting, a video trilogy: Unfolding Places (2004), Restrained Courage (2004), and Squandering Negative Spaces (2006), Gymnastics of the Foldables (2006), and Three Kinds in Transition (2008).^[9] On the second floor, her Venetian blind installation, Cittadella (2011), occupied the entire space.^[10] On the third floor, Yang set up an exhibit titled Warrior Believer Lover (2011) which consisted of thirty-three light sculptures built on wheeled stands.^[11]

Approaching: Choreography Engineered in Never-Past Tense (2012)

This exhibition was part of the dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel, Germany. Documenta is an art exhibition held every five years in Kassel that displays modern and contemporary art. Yang’s exhibition revealed electrically-controlled Venetian blinds that were carefully choreographed to move in distinct patterns, and the mechanism looped after the sequence was finished.

Works

Accommodating the Epic Dispersion – On Non-cathartic Volume of Dispersion (2012)

This art piece was displayed in the Haus der Kunst as part of Der Öffentlichkeit – von den Freunden Haus der Kunst exhibit. Yang used colorful Venetian blinds that hung from the ceiling in various angles. Depending on where the visitor stood, the blinds appeared opaque, semi-opaque, or transparent.^[12] The title of the artwork was chosen to represent the narratives of people of diaspora. For example, Yang read the biographies of figures such as the Korean-Japanese essayist, Suh Kyungsik, and Italian-Jewish chemist and author, Primo Levi, and was inspired to create the title of her work.^[13]

Sonic Figures (2013)

For this series of works, Yang was influenced by Oskar Schlemmer’s Triadic Ballet from 1922.^[14] The Sonic Figures are intricate sculptures made by using brass plated bells on steel stands. These works were part of an exhibition called Journal of Echomimetic Motions displayed in Bergen Kunsthall, Norway. These sculptures embody ideas of mobility and Yang “negates the static furnishings of the exhibition space with its fixed installations and carefully placed objects” by introducing mobile performative sculptures.^[15]

Collections

Among the public collections holding work by Haegue Yang are the Bristol’s Museums, Galleries & Archives, Bristol; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Explum, Murcia; Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig; Kunsthalle Hamburg, Germany; Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Modern Art, and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Muzeum Sztuki, Lodz; National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea; Sammlung Haubrok, Berlin; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Westfälisches Landesmuseum, Münster; and the Zabludowicz Collection.

Awards

2005 Cremer Prize, Stiftung Sammlung Cremer, Münster, Germany

2008 Baloise Prize, Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany

References

External links

• http://heikejung.de/