Haegue Yang Wins Wolfgang Hahn Prize

Today the Gesellschaft für Moderne Kunst am Museum Ludwig recognized Haegue Yang for her extraordinary body of work with the Wolfgang Hahn Prize. The Museum Ludwig will showcase the remarkable versatility of her entire oeuvre in the artist’s first-ever survey exhibition with over 120 works ranging from action-based objects from the 1990s to lacquer paintings, photographs, works on paper and video, anthropomorphic sculptures, performative pieces, and large-scale installations. The abbreviation ETA stands for “estimated time of arrival,” among other things. Thus, the exhibition title points to an artistic career in transit and the constant itineracy of an artist who maintains studios in Seoul and Berlin and has exhibited internationally since 1994. The exhibition will begin with Yang’s first venetian blind installation from her 2006 Series of Vulnerable Arrangements—the 2006 Version Utrecht, an immersive and sensorial experience unfolding from a composition of various materials and the simultaneous use of wind, scents, light, and heat. Within this arrangement, video essays document the artist’s travels through cities around the world and convey feelings of home, isolation, and dislocation associated with her itineracy in quite personal commentaries.

Image on top: Haegue Yang, photo Dirk Vanduffel

Installation view "Haegue Yang: ETA 1994–2018, 2018 Wolfgang Hahn Prize", Museum Ludwig, Cologne, © Haegue Yang, Photo: Dirk Vanduffel

Installation view "Haegue Yang: ETA 1994–2018, 2018 Wolfgang Hahn Prize", Museum Ludwig, Cologne, © Haegue Yang, Photo: Saša Fuis, Cologne

Installation view "Haegue Yang: ETA 1994–2018, 2018 Wolfgang Hahn Prize", Museum Ludwig, Cologne, © Haegue Yang, Photo: Saša Fuis, Cologne

Medicine Man – Indiscreet Other World, from the series Medicine Men, 2010, Zabludowicz Collection, London, © Haegue Yang, Foto: Nick Ash

Haegue Yang, Mountains of Encounter, 2008, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, 2018
, © Haegue Yang, Photo: Museum Ludwig, Šaša Fuis, Cologne