Yang Hae-gue to have first UK survey show at Hayward Gallery

Internationally renowned Korean artist Yang Hae-gue will have her first major museum exhibition in the UK at the Hayward Gallery in October, surveying her artistic practice from the early 2000s to date.

The exhibition at the gallery located on the South Bank of the River Thames in London, “Haegue Yang: Leap Year,” arranged in five thematic sections, will include three new commissions for the exhibition as well as some of her most notable series: “Light Sculptures,” “Sonic Sculptures,” “The Intermediates,” “Dress Vehicles,” “Mesmerizing Mesh” and the Venetian blind installations.

“We are excited to see her first large-scale survey exhibition open at Hayward Gallery," an official from Kukje Gallery, which represents Yang, told The Korea Herald on Thursday. "We are confident that 'Leap Year,' covering a wide range of works from her most representative projects to the new commission piece made for this exhibition, will add to the abundant market of art and culture to open in London during Frieze."

The exhibition has been arranged by Hayward Gallery senior curator Yung Ma with assistant curator Suzanna Petot and curatorial assistant Charlotte Dos Santos. Kukje Art and Culture Foundation has provided support for the show, which runs Oct. 9 to Jan. 5, 2025.

The newly commissioned large-scale Venetian blind installation, “Star-Crossed Rendezvous After Yun,” features ascending layers of Venetian blinds in varying formations and colors that guide visitors through the space, according to the Hayward Gallery.

The exhibition will also present the artist’s early project, “Sadong 30,” 18 years after its creation. The site-specific project was set up in Yang’s unoccupied family home outside Seoul for eight years and led to many of the artist's subsequent artistic developments.

Yang has recently been investigating the relationship between matter and spirituality, working with mulberry paper. Her series of collages, “Mesmerizing Mesh,” which she started in 2021, references sacred and ritualistic paper objects related to shamanism and folk or pagan traditions.