Uncharted Territory: Haegue Yang

The Hamburger Kunsthalle is pleased to announce a solo exhibition by the artist Haegue Yang (b. 1971).

In conjunction with the reopening of the Hamburger Kunsthalle in April 2016, a large project space for contemporary art will be opened in the former foyer of the Gallery of Contemporary Art, bringing with it a new exhibition format. Under the title Neuland / Uncharted Territory, we will hold annually rotating exhibits presenting international artists whose work addresses global processes of change, touching on issues of migration, identity and location, loss and belonging. The artists will be invited to create new works especially for this space. The Stiftung für die Hamburger Kunstsammlungen, which has made the exhibitions possible, will purchase a substantial group of works from the Uncharted Territory series, thereby greatly enriching the Hamburger Kunsthalle’s permanent collection. The installation by Haegue Yang, who was born in 1971 and lives and works in Berlin and Seoul, launches this new exhibition format and underscores the longstanding relationship between the museum and the artist: in 2007, the Hamburger Kunsthalle was the first museum in Germany to acquire a large group of light sculptures by the then-Bâloise Art Prize laureate, who is now an internationally celebrated artist.

Entitled Quasi-Pagan Serial, the exhibition brings together a group of 17 new and older works that allude in equal measure to industrial developments and folk craftsmanship. Yang’s works range from installations constructed from industrially manufactured products such as window blinds, to sculptures created using traditional handicraft techniques such as macramé, straw plaiting and origami. Amidst this wide variety of unconventional arrangements, a visual language of formal abstraction as well as figurative narration unfold. Apparent contradictions between the modern and the traditional – between industrial advances and folk origins – are shaped into countless mixtures. Conventional dichotomies are thus put on display side by side, without commentary, to elicit fresh perspectives. HAEGUE YANG The Intermediate – Fan Dance around a Pagoda, 2016 Artificial straw, steel stand, powder coating, casters, plastic twine, artificial plants 162 x 117 x 117 cm Courtesy of Galerie Barbara Wien, Berlin Photo: Studio Haegue Yang MIRA FORTE Press Office (in charge) Hamburger Kunsthalle Stiftung öffentlichen Rechts Glockengießerwall.

The individual works: The two expansive, light-suffused installations made of window blinds are entitled Sol LeWitt Upside Down (since 2015). By means of constantly changing light conditions and permeability, they add variation and dynamics to the geometry and modularity of the works Cube Structure Based on Five Modules (1971– 1974) by the eponymous Conceptual artist. The rigour and clarity of the Sol LeWitt Upside Down installations contrast in their colours with the compositions of the surrounding windows. Parallel to Haegue Yang’s exhibition, Sol LeWitt’s work All Three-Part Variations of Three Different Kinds of Cubes (1968) is on display on the lower level of the Gallery of Contemporary Art.

The four free-standing straw sculptures are part of a series entitled The Intermediates, which the artist began only in 2015. The Intermediates marked a turning point in Yang’s sculptural oeuvre: she had become well-known in particular through the use of industrially manufactured “ready-made products” in her work; the incorporation of the handicraft of weaving into her creations thus results in a shift in meaning. The four anthropomorphic statues (2016) she created especially for Quasi-Pagan Serial summon up characters from folktales and literature and make reference to traditional Korean dance formations. Ironically, the sculptures are made out of artificial straw, a surrogate for the natural product. Abstract and loaded with connotations, The Intermediates appear like mysterious figures from an alien world – our own civilisation.

Thanks to their specific material (small bells), the six sculptures from the series Sonic Half Moons (2014/15), which hang from the ceiling, also reawaken subconscious memories of old spiritual rituals that weave through various cultures and epochs like anthropological constants. Set in motion through the participation of the observer, the hanging chains of bells create a hypnotic choreography consisting of synchronised, tentacle-like linear formations that dissolve into light.

The fact that Haegue Yang’s works are grounded in a synesthetic experience of art is evident at the latest in her wall installation Spice Moon Cycle (2015). Here the moon, as a cyclical natural phenomenon, becomes the starting point for an abstract composition of 20 spices on sandpaper. Acquired at local markets during Yang’s artist's residency in Singapore (2012), the spices can be understood as a reflection of the diverse ethnic population of South-east Asia and its colonial history as well as evoking the conflictladen legacy of the spice trade and its global consequences.

Additional wall installations and works on paper complete the exhibition: Quasi MB – In the Middle of its Story (2006–2007) and Samples – Wai Hung Weaving Factory Limited, Hong Kong (2015) comprise serial modular structures. Quasi MB refers back to Marcel Broodthaers’ legendary work La Pluie (1969). Exactly like Broodthaers in his cinematic work, Yang sat in the rain with a pen and ink and wrote down her thoughts on slips of paper; the ink was then washed away in the rain. She has framed and annotated her reconstructions of the “lost” slips of paper: they articulate the viewpoint of a contemporary author who is exploring and questioning the idea of the object, its existence and its identity. Samples is made up of elements that are more physical than narrative: they tell a story indirectly. Comprising a complete collection of sample sheets from a manufacturer, the work presents an unspectacular history of a local weaving factory. The nine panels of product sample sheets are contrasted with the aesthetic of Ettore Sottsass (1917–2007).

Non-Foldings – Geometric Tipping #58 (2015) and Rainy Dirty (2012) are serial wall installations. Both series depict a type of impression. Yang started her first lacquer paintings back in 1994 and has continued to produce them again and again ever since: she douses a simple piece of plywood with plain wood varnish and places it in the immediately surrounding area, where it is intended to document evidence of the weather as well as dust and dirt – or, in Yang’s words, to function as a “fly trap”. The Non-Foldings – also called spray paintings – contain shadow images of a lost geometric origami shape. The body of the object has been translated into vague shadows that prompt speculation on the nolonger- existing form of the object, which cannot be completely reconstructed.

Haegue Yang (b. 1971 in Seoul, South Korea) took part in the documenta 13 in Kassel in 2012 and in 2009 she represented South Korea at the Venice Biennale. She has had numerous solo exhibitions including, most recently, at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, China in 2015; the Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art in Seoul, South Korea, in 2015; the Bergen Kunsthall in Norway in 2013; the Aubette 1928 and the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Strasbourg, France, in 2013; the Haus der Kunst in Munich in 2012; the Kunsthaus Bregenz in Austria in 2011; Modern Art Oxford in Oxford, UK, in 2011; the Aspen Art Museum, USA, in 2011; and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN, USA, in 2009. Additional exhibitions of the artist’s work will open this year at the Serralves Museum in Porto and Centre Pompidou in Paris.

Curators: Dr. Brigitte Kölle and Dr. Petra Roettig