Emerging meanings

Since its opening in October, the exhibition Haegue Yang: Emergence has left viewers in awe of the striking complexity of the artist’s oeuvre. This focused survey comprises eighty-two artworks, including large-scale installations, sculptures and two-dimensional works created over the past twenty-five years.

When contemplating one particular meaning of emergence—a phenomenon in which a system or entity develops new qualities that are distinct from its individual parts—the exhibition’s title really hits home. Arranged to highlight distinct bodies of work from key moments in Yang’s career, the survey starts in the mid-1990s and continues to the present, allowing for emergent qualities to become manifest.

Haegue Yang in collaboration with OK-RM (Oliver Knight and Rory McGrath), London. Eclectic Totemic, 2013. Digital colour print. Courtesy of the artists. Sol LeWitt Vehicle – 6 Unit Cube on Cube without a Cube, 2018. Aluminum venetian blinds, powder-coated aluminum frame, powder-coated handles, casters. 362 x 225 x 225 cm. Courtesy of Kukje Gallery. Installation view of Haegue Yang: Emergence, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada, 2020. Photography by Danny Winchester, AGO Image © 2020.

Emergence draws attention to the unique features of Yang’s practice, while showcasing the contextual relationships between individual pieces and the circumstances of their creation. In one of the exhibition’s galleries, for instance, the large-scale mural Eclectic Totemic (2013) covers three walls, providing a kind of frame or backdrop for two of Yang’s Sol LeWitt Vehicles (2018). These sculptures, made from stacked venetian blinds, rest on casters and are equipped with handles for movement; Sol LeWitt Vehicles manifest Yang’s engagement with the tenets of modernism, as well as her ongoing investigation into the modular structures of the American artist Sol LeWitt. Seen together, Eclectic Totemic and Sol LeWitt Vehicles juxtapose different readings of modernism, and the two artworks are further juxtaposed with an auditory work featuring the natural sound of birdsong. The recordings were made during the historic inter-Korean summit of April 2018 in the DMZ (the demilitarized zone that separates North and South Korea). Here a distinctive quality emerges from the pairing of these seemingly disparate works, each of which responds in its own way to a figure of authority, aesthetic or political.    

Haegue Yang, Selected Sculptures, 2011–2020 (from left to right): Reflected Red-Blue Cubist Dancing Mask, 2018. Sonic Sphere with Enthralling Tetrad – Chevron-Ornamented Copper and Nickel, 2016–2018.Triple Verdant Clang Wild and Tamed, 2017. Sonic Clotheshorse – Dressage #3, 2019. Sonic Clotheshorse – Dressage #4, 2019. Dimensions variable. Installation view of Haegue Yang: Emergence, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada, 2020. Photography by Craig Boyko, AGO Image © 2020.

Similarly, upon entering Emergence, visitors encounter a selection of sculptural works made between 2011 and 2020, including the artist’s ongoing series The Intermediates (begun in 2015), using artificial straw, and Sonic Sculptures (begun in 2013), featuring plated bells. Encountered as a group, these quasi-anthropomorphic sculptures reveal Yang’s relentless material exploration, and her ongoing pursuit of transformation that arises from elemental forms.

Over the course of the exhibition, the AGO has hosted a number of virtual dialogues to delve more deeply into Yang’s practice:

Exhibition Supporters Talk: Stuart Comer in conversation with Adelina Vlas

Stuart Comer, Lonti Ebers Chief Curator of Media and Performance at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, discusses the turn toward performativity in Yang’s recent work. He recently co-curated the exhibition Haegue Yang: Handles at MoMA, commissioned for the Museum’s Marron Atrium on the occasion of its 2019 reopening following a major expansion.

Tom McDonough in conversation with Adelina Vlas

Art historian Tom McDonough, Associate Professor at Binghamton University, discusses the modernist roots of Yang’s practice, connecting her work to various twentieth-century avant-gardes through their shared use of non-traditional materials. Among his numerous art historical publications is a pivotal essay on Haegue Yang’s signature material, the venetian blind, entitled “Haegue Yang’s Amphibological Sculpture” (in Haegue Yang: Lingering Nous. Dijon: Les Presses du Réel, 2017).

Curator’s Talk: Adelina Vlas on Haegue Yang

The exhibition’s curator Adelina Vlas, Associate Curator, Contemporary Art at the AGO, gives an informative digital walk-through of each component of the show, providing valuable insight into the works as well as Yang’s practice and career-at-large.

Haegue Yang: Emergence (catalogue)

Available in early April 2021, the Haegue Yang: Emergence official catalogue, edited by Adelina Vlas and Haegue Yang, features contributions by Lynne Cooke and Beck Jee-sook. The 192- page hardcover publication contains essays that help contextualize Yang’s artistic career, and generate new understandings of her transformative contributions to the field of contemporary art. The catalogue will be released through the AGO with Prestel/DelMonico Books and will be available for $54 CAD.