Spellbinding and boundary-pushing
The Hayward Gallery will present Haegue Yang: Leap Year, the first major UK survey of the internationally celebrated artist from 9 October 2024 to 5 January 2025.
Considered to be one of the leading artistic voices of her generation, Yang’s work is both spellbinding and boundary-pushing, probing into contemporary ideas of cross-cultural pollination, modernism and folk traditions, and personal and political histories. Leap Year will illuminate Yang’s multifaceted, interdisciplinary and highly inventive practice from the early 2000s to today, echoing the Hayward Gallery’s mission, as part of the creative engine of the Southbank Centre, to champion artists from across the world whose ideas challenge and spark new ways of thinking.
Arranged into five thematic zones, the exhibition will include three major new commissions and several new productions to present a visual and sensory experience through installation, sculpture, collage, text, video, wallpaper and sound. Yang’s artwork often transforms everyday domestic items and industrial objects, from drying racks and light bulbs to nylon pom-poms and hand-knitted yarn, into distinctive sculptures and multimedia installations that engage the senses. Leap Year will feature key works from some of her most notable series including Light Sculptures, Sonic Sculptures, The Intermediates, Dress Vehicles, Mesmerizing Mesh and the Venetian blind installations.
Newly commissioned Sonic Droplets in Gradation – Water Veil (2024) is part of Yang’s ongoing Sonic Sculptures (2013 – ) series. Visitors will be invited to walk through a curtain of blue and silver stainless-steel bells which trigger sonic reverberations, signalling their arrival. The materiality of the work is steeped in layers of references, from East Asian traditions and folklore to modernism, contemporary art history and nature, and it will act as a physical gateway into an artistic world imagined by Yang.
Modular structures, geometries and movements are some of the main considerations in Yang’s practice. Sonic Dress Vehicle – Hulky Head (2018) and Sol LeWitt Vehicle – 6 Unit Cube on Cube without a Cube (2018) are two large sculptures adorned with bells, macramé surfaces or blinds. These artworks will be activated intermittently during the exhibition’s run; pushed and pulled on a floor vinyl that is inspired by meteorological charts.
Yang’s recent work investigates the relationship between matter and spirituality. Working with mulberry paper, Yang explores the use of this material in ancient belief systems and practices. In her series of collages, Mesmerizing Mesh (2021 – ), the artwork references sacred and ritualistic paper objects related to shamanism and folk or pagan traditions, while The Intermediates (2015 – ) features hybrid ‘creature-like’ sculptures made from artificial straw that draws from global weaving techniques.
Haegue Yang says: “My artworks often have very long names with seemingly odd combinations of words that are hard even for me to memorise, whereas my exhibition titles are much simpler. This naming tradition mirrors my relationship to art-making versus exhibition-making. Art making is like weaving together a piece of complex, and therefore impossible to unweave, fabric, while exhibition making is like tailoring it into something comfortable to wear. Both acts are eager attempts towards perfection. For this survey show, I deliberately unfocused my eyes to obtain the hidden 3D vision of my own practice, which is a rare, perfect occurrence like a leap year.”
Ralph Rugoff, Director of the Hayward Gallery, says: “The Southbank Centre is committed to sparking new ways of thinking and experiencing art, and in line with that mission the Hayward Gallery is delighted to present a solo survey exhibition devoted to Haegue Yang’s extraordinarily inventive work from the past two decades. Yang is one of the world’s most pioneering artists and consistently pushes the boundaries of what an artwork can be and how it is presented with true imagination and creativity.”
Yung Ma, Senior Curator of the Hayward Gallery, says: “Haegue Yang has consistently sought to expand our perception of what it means to be culturally fluid or socio-politically engaged artistically, creating series after series of works that are at once sensual, expressive and captivating. Leap Year strives to be a true reflection of Yang’s vision, weaving together disparate threads that juxtapose histories of recent and ancient pasts with personal experiences and the contemporary condition to give visitors a deeply sensitive, engaging and enthralling experience.”
Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX from 9 October 2024 – 5 January 2025.
Full price standard: £19. Concessions available & Southbank Centre Members go free.
The Hayward Gallery opening times:
Tue – Fri, 10am – 6pm Sat, 10am – 8pm
Sun, 10am – 6pm
Booking and further information: www.southbankcentre.co.uk
