National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Selects Yang Hye Gyu as Artist for 'MMCA Hyundai Series 2020'

[Photo by National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art]

[Asia Economy Reporter Park Byung-hee] The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) announced on the 25th that it has selected Yang Hye-gue (49, photo) as the artist for the 'MMCA Hyundai Series 2020.'

Yang Hye-gue has been actively working based in Seoul and Germany since the mid-1990s and has been invited to major international art events such as the Venice Biennale and Documenta 13 in Kassel. Recently, she has held solo exhibitions and displayed collections at prestigious institutions including the Pompidou Center in Paris, the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and Tate Modern, earning recognition as an important artist in the international contemporary art scene. She received the Korea Culture and Arts Award (Presidential Citation) in 2018 and was the first Asian female artist to receive the Wolfgang Hahn Prize. She is currently a professor in the Department of Fine Arts at her alma mater, the St?delschule in Frankfurt.

As the selected artist for the MMCA Hyundai Series 2020, Yang Hye-gue will hold a solo exhibition at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Seoul from August 29th this year to January 17th next year. The exhibition will feature over 40 diverse works including installations, sculptures, and paintings centered around the theme of 'salrim' (domestic life), a subject the artist has long been interested in, encompassing narratives, abstraction, femininity, and migration.

The artist has approached concepts such as domesticity and crafts from a cultural sociological perspective. Her working methods include employing ready-made techniques using mass-produced products as well as labor-intensive processes.

The exhibition will present a new work titled 'Quartet of Sounding Sculptures (tentative).' By enlarging household and everyday objects to correspond to the human body, the work aims to offer a more metaphorical and contemplative meaning through the expansion, amplification, and transformation of physical scale.

Exhibition view of Yang Hye-kyu's 'Silent Repository ? Clicked Inner Mind', KINDL Center for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany, 2017.
Photo by Jens Ziehe, courtesy of National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art

She will also unveil a new work that visualizes natural phenomena such as atmospheric movements caused by differences in air temperature and humidity through digital murals and large balloon-shaped advertising installations. This new work continues her previous explorations of invisible senses like smell and light.

Additionally, a 10-meter-tall moving blind sculpture titled 'Silent Storage - Clicked Inner Heart' will be installed in the Seoul Box. This piece was previously installed in 2017 at the Boiler House of the KINDL Center for Contemporary Art in Berlin, a former brewery, and represents the latest development stage of her blind installations that have evolved over more than 15 years.

Yun Bum-mo, director of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, stated, "Following the artist's selection at the end of 2017, a collected volume titled 'Separation and Binding: Essays on Yang Hye-gue 2001-2020,' which consolidates research on the artist in collaboration with the museum over about three years, will soon be published. This large-scale solo exhibition of Yang Hye-gue, one of the influential artists in the contemporary international art world, will provide an opportunity to showcase her artistic world in various ways."

The MMCA Hyundai Series is an annual exhibition hosted by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art and sponsored by Hyundai Motor Company, supporting one prominent domestic artist each year. Since its inception in 2014, artists such as Lee Bul, Ahn Kyuchul, Kimsooja, Lim Heung-soon, Choi Jeong-hwa, and Park Chan-kyung have been selected and held solo exhibitions.

The artwork "Strange Fruit (2012-2013)" exhibited at Yang Hye-kyu's solo exhibition "Cone of Uncertainty" held last year at the Bass Museum in Miami, USA
Photo by Zachary Balber, courtesy of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art

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