Städelschule appoints Haegue Yang Professor of Fine Art

After a comprehensive search, including a number of highly qualified candidates, Städelschule is pleased to announce that Haegue Yang has been appointed Professor of Fine Art.

 

Haegue Yang, born 1971 in Seoul, currently lives and works in Berlin and Seoul. Engaging with a wide range of media, such as sculpture, graphic work, and text, Yang’s primarily installation-based artistic practice involves conceptual arrangements of ready-made objects into abstract compositions that build upon subjective readings of various discourses. Her spatial arrangements ‘choreograph’ the viewer’s movements and sensorial experiences using blinds, infrared heaters, humidifiers, sonic elements, electric fans, lighting devices and scent emitters. Yang frequently stages multisensory environments, which—together with the mundane objects—become meditations on labour, on emotional connection and on dislocation. Accentuated references to various art historical moments of abstraction hint at the unstable condition of contemporary society.

 

Haegue Yang is interested in how the formal and conceptual constitute an irresistible paradox in contemporary art, while contemplating and reflecting conflicts of our time. Considering the ever-developing communication technologies and their immense potential, her work can be considered a form of “poetic activism,” as it takes on questions about civilization and identity, from feminist discourses to ideas of migration, social class, and displacement.

 

Haegue Yang’s recent exhibitions include Quasi-Pagan Serial at Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, a large-scaled commissioned work An Opaque Wind Park in Six Folds presented at Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves, Porto as well as Lingering Nous at Centre Pompidou, Paris. Notable previous solo presentations took place at prominent institutions such as Aspen Art Museum, Aspen; Kunsthaus Bregenz, Bregenz; and The New Museum, New York. She was included in the last Montreal Biennale in 2016, dOCUMENTA(13) in 2012 and the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009.

 

At the moment, kurimanzutto is hosting her first solo show, Ornament and Abstraction in Mexico City. This year and next year she will furthermore be featured in exhibitions at Kunsthaus Graz, KINDL – Zentrum für zeitgenössische Kunst, Berlin, La Triennale de Milano, and La Panacée, Montpellier. Upcoming surveying exhibitions on her oeuvre are expected at Museum Ludwig, Cologne and at The Geffen Contemporary (MOCA), Los Angeles.

 

Yang succeeds Prof. Michael Krebber who left the Städelschule in February 2016 after 14 years of teaching activity.