Haegue Yang — Lingering Nous — Centre Georges Pompidou — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: July 6 → September 5, 2016

The Centre Pompidou host a large-scale commissioned blind installation, Lingering Nous by Haegue Yang (Seoul, 1971) at the Forum. Known for her prolific and versatile mode of practice across various media, from paper collage to performative sculptures, Yang’s artistic explorations stem from material-based concerns, accompanied by philosophical, emotionally charged, and idiosyncratic readings of historical events and figures.

The Forum, the site of Lingering Nous, is a unique physical and social space within the institution. Encompassing a vast volume spanning three levels of the lobby, it is also freely accessible to all. Lingering Nous engages with this total openness through Yang’s handling of abstraction as an ending point, as, depending on one’s viewpoint, it immerses within or emerges from the lobby’s trench-like space.

Yang’s blind installations, her most notable work category over the past decade, employ her signature material of Venetian blinds. Consisting of ca. 166 Venetian blinds in iridescent green and pink, Lingering Nous addresses the monumental nature of blind installations, while also unexpectedly featuring blinds installed askew. Calling upon the term “Nous,” referred to as “thought” in Greek philosophy, yet with its potential and intuitive nature stressed by contemporary philosophers like G. Agamben, Yang suggests contemplating on the potentiality lingering in her work, as a not-yet-tinted form of abstraction.

Haegue Yang, Lingering Nous, Centre Pompidou, 2016 Installation © Haegue Yang © Centre Pompidou, 2016 — Photo © Philippe Migeat

Lingering Nous will continue with four video essays in level -1 of the Forum, namely Video Trilogy (2004-2006) and Doubles and Halves — Events with Nameless Neighbors (2009). Rooted in the intimate realities amidst our fleeting contemporary life, the videos’ narrations endow a voice to the mute installation, offering additional access to Yang’s work.

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Haegue Yang lives and works in Berlin, Germany and Seoul, Korea. She took part in documenta 13 in Kassel in 2012 and in 2009, represented South Korea at the Venice Biennale. Yang’s numerous solo exhibitions have been, to mention a recent few, at the Serralves Museum in Porto, Portugal, 2016; the Hamburger Kunsthalle in Hamburg, Germany, 2016; Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, China 2015; the Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art in Seoul, Korea, 2015; the Aubette 1928 and Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Strasbourg, France, 2013; the Haus der Kunst in Munich, 2012; the Kunsthaus Bregenz in Austria, 2011; Modern Art Oxford, UK, 2011; the Aspen Art Museum, USA, 2011; and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN, USA, 2009.

An Artist Talk with Haegue Yang will be held at the Centre Pompidou, on Friday, October 21st 2016, at 7pm, for the release of her book, Lingering Nous, co-published by Presses du réel. This publication will contain ca. 19 major blind installations, accompanied by an essay by Tom McDonough.