sala rekalde presents Symmetric Inequality the first solo exhibition in Spain by Berlin-based artist Haegue Yang. The work belongs to a group of installations the artist has been developing over the course of this year, focusing her interest on investigating new possibilities for parallel crossings between abstraction and narration. Together with Kunstverein (Hamburg), Cubitt (London), the Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh), Portikus (Frankfurt) and REDCAT (Los Angeles), sala rekalde now contributes to the closure of a serial project that has taken the medium of portraiture as the point of departure for its own articulation.
Symmetric Inequality continues a process of experimentation based on the artist's personal use of the portrait-like study within abstract terms, firstly to open this format to a more allegorical space for representing subjectivity, secondly to investigate the political implications embedded within hidden fragments of personal memories and, lately, as a possible platform for self-recognition.
Starting from the installation Mountains of Encounter at Kunstverein Hamburg, Haegue Yang stressed her interest in a particular series of meetings during the Japanese occupation (1910-1945) between Korean underground fighter, Kim San, and American journalist, Nym Wales, from which a dissident view of Korean history was narrated. Following this line of work, Lethal Love at Cubitt in London comprised another portrait installation, informed this time by the life and death of the peace movement activist and founder of the German Green Party, Petra Kelly, and her life partner, Gert Bastian, a former NATO general. The overlap between her public image and her private life was translated into a porous construction. In Three Kinds, presented at the 55th Carnegie International at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, the artist employed a more dialectical approach than in previous installations. As a result of this, the concept of portraiture and its potential narratives were diluted into a less descriptive exercise to highlight its own abstract configuration. Her solo show entitled Sibling and Twins at Portikus in Frankfurt am Main returned to narrative as the starting point for configuring the materials used in the installation. Two pairs of historical characters; on the one hand, Kim San and Nym Wales and on the other, French writer and filmmaker Marguerite Duras and her husband, the Resistance fighter Robert Antelme, were juxtaposed in two distinct works. More recently, in Asymmetric Equality at REDCAT, Los Angeles the artist opened up a dialogue between fragments of certain biographies and her own vital experiences. The childhood of French author Marguerite Duras in Indochina reminded her own memories of youth in an under-developed society. Described as "warm melancholy" by the artist,Asymmetric Equality evoked colonial displacement, the dislocation of subjectivity and empowering melancholy through the clash between heat, wind, light and sound.
Symmetric Inequality continues a process of experimentation based on the artist's personal use of the portrait-like study within abstract terms, firstly to open this format to a more allegorical space for representing subjectivity, secondly to investigate the political implications embedded within hidden fragments of personal memories and, lately, as a possible platform for self-recognition.
Starting from the installation Mountains of Encounter at Kunstverein Hamburg, Haegue Yang stressed her interest in a particular series of meetings during the Japanese occupation (1910-1945) between Korean underground fighter, Kim San, and American journalist, Nym Wales, from which a dissident view of Korean history was narrated. Following this line of work, Lethal Love at Cubitt in London comprised another portrait installation, informed this time by the life and death of the peace movement activist and founder of the German Green Party, Petra Kelly, and her life partner, Gert Bastian, a former NATO general. The overlap between her public image and her private life was translated into a porous construction. In Three Kinds, presented at the 55th Carnegie International at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, the artist employed a more dialectical approach than in previous installations. As a result of this, the concept of portraiture and its potential narratives were diluted into a less descriptive exercise to highlight its own abstract configuration. Her solo show entitled Sibling and Twins at Portikus in Frankfurt am Main returned to narrative as the starting point for configuring the materials used in the installation. Two pairs of historical characters; on the one hand, Kim San and Nym Wales and on the other, French writer and filmmaker Marguerite Duras and her husband, the Resistance fighter Robert Antelme, were juxtaposed in two distinct works. More recently, in Asymmetric Equality at REDCAT, Los Angeles the artist opened up a dialogue between fragments of certain biographies and her own vital experiences. The childhood of French author Marguerite Duras in Indochina reminded her own memories of youth in an under-developed society. Described as "warm melancholy" by the artist,Asymmetric Equality evoked colonial displacement, the dislocation of subjectivity and empowering melancholy through the clash between heat, wind, light and sound.
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