akive

○ Exhibition Information

Artist: Haegue Yang (Korean, 1971-)
Title: The Sea Wall - Haegue Yang with Felix Gonzalez-Torres
Duration: June 16 – September 4, 2011 (exc Mondays)
Place: Arnolfini, UK
Opening hours: 11am–6pm
www.arnolfini.org.uk

○ Exhibition Introduction

The two‐person exhibition The Sea Wallwill facilitate a conversation between the work of artist Haegue Yang and Felix Gonzalez‐Torres. Operating though a number of conceptual and aesthetic approaches, this dialogue will look to activate their respective practices anew, drawing on the co‐existence of the poetical and political aspects in their work, contextualising them in a contemporary socio‐political, as well as artistic discourse.

Gonzalez‐Torres believed that power could be created by politicising aesthetic beauty, providing it with a new sense of purpose. This kind of ‘reinvestment’ in aesthetic languages can also be found in the work of Yang, who has inherited much from his particular ‘post‐minimal’ approach to producing art. Combining ideas and practices that are informed by both post‐modern theory and feminist discourses, their works are emotionally charged, often with a sense of fragility or vulnerability, whilst offering a necessary level of complexity to today’s discourses around identity politics.

Gonzalez‐Torres’ work Untitled (Water), 1995, a beaded curtain work he created shortly before his untimely death, will be presented throughout all the exhibition spaces, large‐ and small‐scale, in entranceways as well as being used to create transitional spaces. This work is returning to Arnolfini, having been previously exhibited here a decade ago, this time presenting this type of work by the artist in this expanded, multi‐locational form for the first time. In dialogue with this will be a key selection of works by Yang from the last ten years, including early formative works.

The Sea Wallwill present the affinities and contrasts in their respective practices, examining their approaches to such notions as: intimacy and activism, private and public, inside and outside, as well as place and people, relevant for contemporary society in different cultural contexts. Of particular significance here will be the notion of ‘community’ – fragile, invisible or temporary community – a significant subject in the work of these artists.

The exhibition has been titled after the novel The Sea Wallby writer Marguerite Duras, which depicts her life as a child growing up in colonial‐era French Indochina during the 1930s, after the death of her father. Her mother is conned into buying a plot of land to live from, which is flooded by the sea every year, ruining the harvest. It is a tale of a struggling immigrant family, with the mother treated with disdain by the state authorities for being a foreign woman.

A text by Liam Gillick has been commissioned to accompany the exhibition.

Exhibition curated by Nav Haq, Exhibitions Curator