Haegue Yang, Series of Vulnerable Arrangements—Voice and Wind, 2009. Aluminum frame, aluminumvenetian blinds, industrial electric fans, scent emitters. Dimensions variable. Installation view, “Condensation: Haegue Yang,” 53rd International Art Exhibition, Venice Biennial, 2009. Courtesy Galerie B... Read more
Haegue Yang, Series of Vulnerable Arrangements—Voice and Wind, 2009. Aluminum frame, aluminumvenetian blinds, industrial electric fans, scent emitters. Dimensions variable. Installation view, “Condensation: Haegue Yang,” 53rd International Art Exhibition, Venice Biennial, 2009. Courtesy Galerie Barbara Wien, Berlin, and Kukje Gallery, Seoul. Photo by Pattara Chanruechachai. Yang’s work is marked by a particular preoccupation with the coexistence of formalism and emotion, determination and meandering. She has created meditative,
striking installations at the 2006 São Paulo Biennial, sala rekalde in Bilbao, and REDCAT in Los Angeles, in which man-made sensorial stimuli enhance an experience of space and time. For Yang’s installation at the New Museum, industrial fans placed within the gallery will generate wind at various intervals, altering both
the stability of the blinds as suspended barriers and the movement of visitors through the space. Scent atomizers integrated in and around the system of blinds will infuse the installation with a subtle olfactory experience, calling upon the visitors’ subjectivity as a key element in the definition of the space. Flooded with natural light, Series of Vulnerable Arrangements—Voice and Wind (2009) will evoke shadows of places and experiences not physically present. As in her earlier works, Yang introduces electricity as an invisible connection between objects, people, and ideas, and as the source of artificial approximations of sensual experiences “that conjure other places, other people, comfort, distress, something familiar, perhaps something profoundly forgotten,” writes Eungie Joo, curator.
In Series of Vulnerable Arrangements—Voice and Wind, as in other related installations, Yang employs
commercially-manufactured venetian blinds as a kind of imperfect spatial boundary, easily transgressed
visually, aurally, and physically. For this installation, Yang chose a custom selection of uncategorizable
colors and patterns that exist at the edge of taste. These functional decorations for the home defy rigid
concepts of design or periodization to emphasize the nonaesthetics of the private sphere, “where the
self is cared for and contemplated, and can be shared in a different way,” says Yang.
