Lethal Love Haegue Yang

Cubitt is proud to present Lethal Love, a new commissioned installation by Berlin-based artist Haegue Yang (Seoul, 1971). With this ambitious architectural construction, Cubitt joins a group of international institutions that will individually host parts of a large group of installations by the artist over the course of this year. Together with Kunstverein Hamburg, Portikus (Frankfurt), Sala Rekalde (Bilbao) and Cubitt, Yang has developed a series of abstract portraits that take their inspiration from infamous public personas in Asian and European history. This evolutionary storyline will find its final form in a publication to be released late 2008 by Sala Rekalde. Lethal Love is inspired by the life of German activist Petra Kelly - the founder of Germany`s influential Green Party - who was shot in her sleep in 1992 by her lover and supporter. Her tragic death is seen by Yang as a metaphor for Kelly`s conflicted life: torn between her life as a public defender of pacifism and 90s European political moral on the one hand, and her obscure private life, depending on the protection of an ex-army general on the other. The dramatic polemic of Kelly`s still unsolved homicide generates a striking resemblance with Yang`s artistic production which challenges the balance between private and public. The highly subjective interpretation of Kelly`s story for instance, is executed within the gallery space in such an abstract fashion that a clear narrative relation to the story seems to be sabotaged instead of communicated: where the private life of Kelly stayed obscured for the public eye, the public form of Yang`s installations mask their own conceptual points of departure. Haegue Yang`s artistic production has been strikingly described as the combination of the act of speech and the act of silence. The objects of mass production that define Yang`s pallet (Venetian blinds, floodlights, mirrors and scent machines) are charged with an almost dramatic mythology that generates a plurality of interpretation. As an answer to a question that is still unknown, Yang`s installations challenge the viewer`s private engagement - intellectually and physically - through the use of light, scent and movement. With kind support of Arts Council England. Cubitt`s exhibition programme (October 2007 - March 2009) is supported by: Outset Contemporary Art Fund, 176/Zabludowicz Collection and others.