15/5/2008
Haegue Yang
Portikus, Frankfurt
Siblings and Twins. The new installation is composed of two parts that are connected by substantial metaphorical parallels yet formally distinct. Yang's current works are based on subjectively selected aspects from the lives of a variety of historical characters. In this case, these are the fighter for Korea's freedom Kim San and the French author Marguerite Duras.
Curated by Melanie Ohnemus
Haegue Yang is showing a new installation at the Portikus entitled
Siblings and Twins. The work is composed of two parts that are
connected by substantial metaphorical parallels yet formally distinct.
Yang’s current works are based on subjectively selected aspects from
the lives of a variety of historical characters. In the case of
Siblings and Twins, shown at the Portikus, these are the fighter for
Korea’s freedom Kim San and the French author Marguerite Duras. The
specific interest is here primarily in the transfer of subjectively
felt intensities that underlie the public perception of these
characters and the circumstances of their lives into an abstract form.
With this exhibition, the Portikus is part of a serial project Yang
has designed for this year; the project calls for further installations
—pursuing the same substantive idea, but with different characters and
their abstract translations—to be installed in a number of
international exhibition spaces, including the Hamburg Kunstverein;
Cubitt Gallery, London; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh;
Gallery Red Cat, Los Angeles; and Sala Rekalde, Bilbao.
Haegue Yang’s artistic approach is marked by a particular interest in
the language of abstraction, and in particular in how the rhetoric of
formal abstraction might make it possible to relate abstractly
conceived complex facts about the world in a self-supporting language.
Using everyday materials and objects such as blinds, metal structures,
light bulbs, perforated metal sheets, and spotlights as formal means,
Yang creates an exhibition situation in which the visitor is called
upon to face—both physically and intellectually—the plurality of
possible interpretations. Yang’s subjective reading treats the
histories the exhibition engages—focusing on two pairs of characters,
Kim San–Nym Wales and Marguerite Duras–Robert Antelme—as comparable in
that both lives are marked by an intense struggle with one’s own fate
and an unconditional devotion, to the point of self-sacrifice, to
one’s political ideals and the belief in them. This reading
contemplates and unites the lives of two individuals as subjects under
a single universal and collective aspect. Their specifics may vary,
yet the universal quality expressed by Haegue Yang in her
installations through the use of abstract forms can be understood as a
quest for and assertion of a subjective truth. At stake is here less a
precise biographical narration than a rhetorical visualization,
universal and yet subjective, of certain intensive states and aspects
immanent to the “real” histories.
The real histories on which the installations are based might be told
in the following way: Red Broken Mountainous Labyrinth tells the story
of the fighter for Korea’s freedom Kim San, who participated in the
underground campaign from China against the Japanese occupation of
Korea between 1905 and 1938, and his biographer, the American
journalist Nym Wales. Over the course of a number of years, the two
met a number of times in life-threatening circumstances. Later on, Nym
Wales’ indefatigable exertions helped make Kim San an icon among the
many nameless participants in the fight for Korea’s freedom. With its
labyrinthine structure, the installation Red Broken Mountainous
Labyrinth represents an encounter between two people without whom a
chapter of Korean history would have been lost to oblivion. The second
installation, 5, Rue Saint-Benoît, points toward Marguerite Duras’s
apartment in Paris at the same address, which served as a hub and
meeting-point and witnessed important events both political and
private. Duras lived there with her husband, Robert Antelme, with whom
she worked in the Résistance. Antelme, however, was arrested and
deported to Dachau. After his liberation, in 1945, he was taken back
to the Rue Saint-Benoît and nursed back to health. The installation 5,
Rue Saint-Benoît shows a number of objects whose measurements
correspond to those of objects one finds in the kitchens and bathrooms
of apartments—in this case, the artist’s own—such as a kitchen table,
a water heater, a shower stall, or a stove. The work thus examines the
apartment as a site of the political struggle for survival.
Solo exhibitions (selection): 2008: Lethal Love, Cubitt Gallery,
London; Baloise Prize, Kunsthalle Hamburg, Hamburg; 2007: Foxed in the
Forest, dépendance, Brussels;
Haubrokshows – Unpacking Storage Piece, Sammlung Haubrok, Berlin;
Seven Basel Lights, Basel Statement with Galerie Barbara Wien, Basel;
Remote Room, Gallery Barbara Wien, Berlin; 2006: SA-DONG 30, Incheon,
Korea; Unevenly, BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht.
Group exhibitions (selection): 2008: 55th Carnegie International,
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Whose History, Hamburger
Kunstverein, Hamburg; 2007:
Brave New Worlds, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Tomorrow, Artsonje
Center & Kumho Museum, Seoul; Prague Biennale, Prague; Made in
Germany, Sprengel Museum, Kestnergesellschaft, Kunstverein Hannover,
Hannover.
The exhibition and catalogue have been made possible by generous
support from Stiftung Polytechnische Gesellschaft, Frankfurt am Main,
and Deutsche Bank Stiftung.
The exhibition of Haegue Yang’s work is one in a series of exhibitions
entitled MainWerk —a cooperation between Stiftung Polytechnische
Gesellschaft, Frankfurt am Main, the Städelschule, and the Portikus.
Once every year, the exhibition series seeks to show a work of art
created especially for the Portikus by a former student at the
Städelschule who has successfully pursued a career as an artist after
graduation and is being exhibited on the national or international
stage. By showing his or her work at the Portikus, the series seeks to
bring this artist back—at least temporarily—to Frankfurt and to
present his or her work to a local audience. With this exhibition
series, Stiftung Polytechnische Gesellschaft, Frankfurt am Main, seeks
to draw attention to Frankfurt’s contribution to contemporary art and
to support young artists from Frankfurt.
Stiftung Polytechnische Gesellschaft, Frankfurt am Main, was founded
in 2005. Its philanthropic work is concentrated in three main areas:
education, science, and technology; arts and culture, including
preservation of the city’s cultural heritage; and social, charitable,
and humanitarian work. It seeks to contribute to Frankfurt’s
development as a model modern and citizen-centered urban society.
Opening: May 16, 2008, 8 pm
Press conversation: May 16, 2008, 11 am
Portikus
Alte Brucke 2 (Maininsel) - Frankfurt