Thursday, November 21, 2019

Haegue Yang: Handles at MoMA


MoMa presents an installation piece, Handles by Haegue Yang, a Korean artist. Coming up with an idea of interaction between humans and objects, Yang created an installation piece incorporated performance, making her sculptures movable by people. 

On the second floor, a large open space, multiple sculptures are placed on a floor that has irregular patterns of rainbow-colored glittering geometric shapes mixed with black triangles. The walls and pillars are also full of the glittering and black shapes that attract audience to look up to the whole area. Playfully, red handles are placed on the walls like a rock climbing wall. The black versions of these handles are put on the main mobile sculptures on the floor, that sculptures are created with steel, nickel, mesh, in bronze and silver tones. The center piece, Sonic Gate, is covered with copper- and nickel-plated bells, and contains a star form with seven sharp points. With the handles on the center and the craters of the bottom, the piece can be operated to be moved by people. The three dynamic-looking pieces, the Sonic Handles, are displayed right next to each one of the three walls. They all have a center circle with oval forms stuck out, and balance on four legs protruding from each center. 



The other pieces displayed near Sonic Gate, the Sonic Coupe series, show bottle-like forms with thinner oval tops and thicker middles. These all have craters and metal handles as well. From 4p.m. to 5p.m., a performers wearing black clothing come to activate each piece by piece. Any viewers in MoMA are welcomed to take a look and shoot videos and pictures of the shiny moving creatures.       


1 comment:

  1. Hi So ye
    You did a really great job on describing the sculpture and the environment, i almost feel like I don't have to be there to see the exhibition. One suggestion about the performance aspect is that I wish you mention about the sculptures, when activated, how silent they were, because we all thought since the sculptures are made by thousands of bells, it must make a big noise but in reality it did not. I feel like that contrast might be part of artist's intention and worth mentioned. Other than that you did really good!

    Ziping

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