S.M.A.K. is honoured to be the first museum in Belgium to present a solo exhibition of internationally renowned artist Haegue Yang.
The intriguing and refined approaches of Haegue Yang encompass large-scale sculptures and installations as well as works on paper, photography, video, sound and text. Her works are also distinguished by its formal agility and its capacity to convey various ideas, histories, perceptions and emotions. The central hall of Several Reenactments at S.M.A.K. is occupied by seventeen sculptural units titled Warrior Believer Lover – Version Sonic (2023). These sculptural ensembles are reenactments of her previous multi-part installation Warrior Believer Lover (2011). Constituting a horizontally open sculptural field, Warrior Believer Lover – Version Sonic will be accompanied by Igor Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps (1913) among other works by Yang, while the wings on both sides of the hall mirror each other and build a symmetry.
Yang’s works are primarily composed of industrially manufactured objects, yet possess a remarkable richness due to their artisanal or rigorous arrangements. The ideas of this seemingly oppositional dialectic running through her works, as other notions like abstract and figurative, mechanical and organic, traditional and forward-looking, constantly mirror each other. In response to today’s bold and urgent global issues about migration, identity and community, Yang proposes a discreet yet firm artistic commitment. Excavating from unexpected, even imagined encounters, complex cross-linkages and sometimes contradictory translations of forms, lives, cultures, eras, traditions and practices, she unearths not only shared meanings, but also distils new contemporary entities.
The exhibition is realised in partnership between S.M.A.K. and HAM Helsinki Art Museum, Helsinki, Finland.
With the support of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism of Korea / Korean Cultural Center Brussels, Galerie Barbara Wien, Galerie Chantal Crousel and Galerie Dépendance.
Biography
With her extensive conceptual research and prolific works, Haegue Yang (b. 1971, Seoul) is undoubtedly regarded as one of the most celebrated artists of our time. Responding to the exhibition as a place, her works incorporate the architectural and contextual aspects of the exhibition space and various materials collected in the locality. Her sophisticated and nuanced treatment of materiality, combined with an elegant sense of space and atmosphere, contribute to her engaging and resonant installations.
Yang was the winner of the Wolfgang Hahn Prize from Gesellschaft für Moderne Kunst, Ludwig Museum, Cologne in 2018 and the 13th Benesse Prize at the Singapore Biennale in 2022. Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions at the following institutions: Pinacoteca de São Paulo (2023); SMK – National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen (2022); Tate St Ives (2020); MMCA, Seoul (2020), MoMA, New York (2019); The Bass, Miami Beach (2019); Museum Ludwig, Cologne (2018); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2016); Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul (2015); Kunsthaus Bregenz (2011); South Korea Pavilion, 53rd Venice Biennale (2009); among others.
