Yang Hae-gue chosen as this year‘s MMCA Hyundai Motor Series artist

The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea has selected Yang Hae-gue as its seventh artist for the MMCA Hyundai Motor Series, the museum announced on Wednesday.

The MMCA Hyundai Motor Series, sponsored by the Hyundai Motor Company, aims to introduce the current state of Korean contemporary art. The project selects a promising artist every year who has established their own aesthetic world and provide opportunities to construct their own unique art platform. 

Yang is considered a promising installation artist both home and abroad with her rigorous practices. She is known to use everyday objects such as Venetian blinds, light bulbs and bells as she attempts to liberate them from their functional contexts.

In 2018, she became the first Asian female artist to be awarded the Wolfgang Hahn Prize by the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany.

The 48-year-old artist was born in Seoul and is currently based in Berlin. Her works have been exhibited at the Museum Ludwig, Centre Pompidou in Paris, Museum of Modern Art in New York, Tate Modern Museum in UK and Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art in Seoul.

Yang has participated in many biennales around the world, including the 2018 Sydney Biennale, 12th Sharjah Biennial in 2015, 13th Kassel Documenta in 2012 and Gwangju Biennale in 2010. Yang also showed her work at the 53rd Venice Biennale’s Korean Pavilion.

MMCA Seoul will host an exhibition of Yang’s 40 works from August 29 to Jan. 17, 2021. “We have prepared for the exhibition for the past three years with full discussion with the artist,” a public relation official at MMCA told The Korea Herald. “The exhibition will be the most comprehensive exhibition of the artist ever and a good change to introduce the artist internationally.”

Former winners of the MMCA Hyundai Motor Series include internationally acclaimed artists such as Park Chan-kyong, Lee Bul, Ahn Kyu-chul, Kim Soo-ja and Im Heung-soon.

MMCA’s four venues in Seoul, Gwacheon, Cheongju and Deoksugung will remain closed until March 8 as part of a preventive move against the novel coronavirus.

By Park Yuna (yunapark@heraldcorp.com)