Kukje Gallery is pleased to present a solo booth dedicated to Haegue Yang at Frieze New York 2024, which focuses on Mesmerizing Mesh (since 2021), a series of paper collages. While Yang is recognized as a sculptor, she has continuously worked with graphic mediums, which are less known so far. During an extended stay in her home country, which coincided with the pandemic, Yang started her long-aspired investigation on shamanistic paper props, and the first twelve works debuted as a modest presentation in August 2021 at Kukje Gallery, Seoul. The continued anthropological search into diverse paper traditions related to spiritual or folk rituals gradually constituted streams of unique micro-histories on paper, which became the backbone of Mesmerizing Mesh. Three small booklets document Yang’s trajectory around cultural-spiritual paper props, and this occasion marks the first presentation of this actively evolving series to the U.S. audience and offers a glimpse into her unique quest into the materiality of paper.
"As such, the flat works are not flat at all, they are sites of compression, paradoxically revealing a depth of space. For Yang, flattening is a “synonym for abstraction” and this abstraction acts across dimensions to infiltrate and deconstruct ways of knowing in contemporary society. Objects, spaces, and places alike are flattened and expanded, folded and unfolded, faceted, shifted and made askew. Oscillating between two and three dimensions, Yang challenges standardized systems of organization, production, taxonomy, economy, and movement to unveil the ways in which they limit, order and structure daily life and suggest other ways of knowing and being in the world. " –Orianna Cacchione
Orianna Cacchione (2024). Non-Parallel Dimensions: Shifting between Haegue Yang’s Flat Work and Sculpture. [Publication in preparation].
The relationship between spirit and matter has been an ongoing inquiry throughout Yang’s wide-ranging practice. In Mesmerizing Mesh, the shamanistic act of blowing a soul into feeble materiality like a sheet of paper occupies a central inspiration. The series employs hanji, traditional Korean paper made from the inner bark of the mulberry tree, as well as comparable types of mulberry paper found across Asia, such as the Japanese washi and Chinese chupizhi. The newly explored material has led her to conduct extensive research into various paper props used in healing, exorcizing, and purifying rituals across civilizations. By folding, cutting, and perforating hanji to imbue the material with spiritual desires and intercessory purposes, Yang mobilizes the common methodology of “mystical leaps,” as Sol LeWitt once stated in his legendary Sentences on Conceptual Art (1968).
Among her references, motifs drawn from seolwiseolgyeong (the tradition and technique of sacred paper cutting for rituals performed in Chungcheong Province) in Korean shamanism and gohei (a wooden wand decorated with zigzag paper streamers) in Japanese Shinto practices form the primary visual repertoire. The series can be formally categorized into two subgroups. The first one contains abstract and geometric motifs based on the compositional principle of ‘formation’ or ‘Sacred Wire Mesh,’ a design of patterns and letters installed in ritual sites to drive out evil spirits. The other group features figurative and anthropomorphic motifs drawn from nukjeon, a soul sheet that symbolizes the soul of the deceased in Korean shamanistic rituals. Of late, her range of references for this series has expanded beyond shamanism in her native Korea to include: the Slavic wycinanki, the Jewish kebutot and mizrahs, Mexico’s papel picado, the Philippines’ pabalat, China’s jianzhi, Japan’s kirigami, and India’s sanjhi. While Mesmerizing Mesh is materially anchored in the medium of paper, the broad anthropological affinities addressed in the series challenge the conventional notion of localized spiritual practices as territorially bound by resituating them in a translocal context. The latest development of Mesmerizing Mesh was on view at the Thailand Biennale, Chiang Rai 2023. Enveloped Domestic Soul Channels – Mesmerizing Mesh #208 (2023) comprised six individual pieces of Mesmerizing Mesh in hanji and washi, revolving around the domestic paper altar of the Hmong, an indigenous group in East and Southeast Asia. During the Vietnam War, many Hmong people became refugees in Thailand as they fled from Laos and have since established diasporic communities around the world, including the U.S. This seminal Mesmerizing Mesh presentation in New York is visually reminiscent of Hmong spiritual objects relating to shamanism and animism, which Yang encountered during the site visit for her participation in the Thailand Biennale. Eight intricate compositions made of hanji and washi and featuring Hmong motifs are presented on delicate wooden structures—enshrining wooden stands that not only accommodate the works, but also reference books introducing various paper traditions. Shortly thereafter, Yang will participate in two projects, launching on June 21, 2024, in Naoshima, Japan. Yang and fellow recipients of the Benesse Prize, namely Pannaphan Yodmanee, Zul Mahmod, and Amanda Heng, will take part in an awardee exhibition at the Benesse House Museum (in collaboration with the Singapore Art Museum). Simultaneously, Yang and Apichatpong Weerasethakul will collectively occupy a new art space called Matabe in Naoshima. Ring of Fire (on view through 2027 or further) will feature site-specific works of both artists that constitute an environment embracing the sensations of light, shadow, movement, and vibration. Displaying a shared interest in channelling what composes our reality, yet escapes from it, their works explore the vigorous encounters between the physical and the ephemeral together. Later this year, the Arts Club of Chicago will host Yang’s solo show Flat Works 2004-2024 (opening on September 18, 2024), surveying two decades of the artist’s two-dimensional works. The show will be accompanied by an eponymously titled publication, which will include essays by Orianna Cacchione and a large selection of works from the Mesmerizing Mesh series. In October 2024, a major survey exhibition of Yang’s œuvre will open at the Hayward Gallery in London.
About the Artist
Born in 1971 in Seoul, South Korea, Haegue Yang currently lives and works between Berlin and Seoul. One of the most significant artists of her generation, Yang is a prolific artist who consistently experiments with her artistic language and maintains a steady stream of exhibitions worldwide. Yang moved to Germany in 1994 to study at the renowned art school Städelschule, where she received a Meisterschüler. She is currently Professor of Fine Art at her alma mater. In 2018, she received the prestigious Wolfgang Hahn Prize as well as the Republic of Korea Culture and Arts Award (Presidential Citation) in the visual arts category. In 2022, she won the 13th Benesse Prize, presented by Benesse Holdings Inc. in collaboration with the Singapore Art Museum (SAM), leading to her forthcoming project in Naoshima, Japan, slated for June 2024. Yang has held solo exhibitions in numerous museums across the globe, including the Helsinki Art Museum (HAM), Finland (2023); National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Australia (2023); Pinacoteca Contemporânea, São Paulo (2023); Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen (2022); Tate St Ives, Saint Ives (2020); Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York City (2019); Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach (2019); Museum Ludwig, Cologne (2018); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2016); Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2015); Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul (2015); and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2009). Yang participated in Documenta 13, Kassel (2012) and represented Korea at the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009). In October 2024, Yang will stage a major survey show at the Hayward Gallery, London, UK, which will then travel across Europe
