Yang Ah Ham, Adjective Life in the Nonsense Factory

Pole Installation as Individuals in the Society

2007-present

Multi-media Installation

Yang Ah Ham’s solo show at Sonje Art Centre in Seoul displayed a spectrum of works produced over the recent years from 2007. The show displayed a spontaneous yet disorientating look into the relation between individuals and society, which conceptually and emotionally guides the content of the works. Born in Korea, the artist has lived and worked in Korea, the US and the Middle-East, and now resides in the Netherlands.

Adjective Life in the Nonsense Factory accentuated the idea of the ‘adjective’ to question the need for individual perspectives. Sidelining the use of the ‘noun’ which is applied to reference an object, the artist explores the ways in which we use adjectives to identify, characterise and quantify things. Inside the ‘nonsense factory’, a multitude of stories disrupt the construct of reality. Instead, the artist interweaves various secrets, emotions and desires that slip between fact and fiction.

The solo show included diverse media including video, drawings, sculptures, paintings and performances. In Individuals in Society (2007), a television and audio system were attached to a metal pole to give an abstract appearance of a human figure. Each monitor displayed a still image of an anonymous face while the audio projected the sound of a person muttering. Lost in conversation, eerie and discrepant voices struggled to connect and communicate with each other. Like strangers on the street, robotic poles became distant and transient beings.

Bird's Eye View, 2008, High Speed HD, 10' 16"

In contrast, a more poignant video piece called Bird’s Eye View (2008) showed a perspective from an animal. A camera was attached to a pigeon which was professionally trained to fly across the city and return to the training ground. The video led to a surprising voyage, navigating a stunning panoramic view of the cityscape perceived by the animal, also reversing its gaze to city dwellers.

Chocolate Head

2007-present, Sculpture, Before and After Performance

Her best known piece perhaps, is Chocolate Head (2007), a sculpture of a renowned international curator made from dark chocolate. The object transmitted qualities of sensuality, interrogating both notions of desire and power. Out of Frame (2007) recorded a group of performers interacting with the chocolate head. Towards the end of the performance, the head was deformed and barely recognisable from the original, which left behind traits of admiration, attraction, manipulation and hunger. This also questioned the hierarchical system in the art world, consisting of famed curators, artists and collectors. Her most recent work, Artist (2010) is a continuation of the chocolate series. This time, the artist carefully crafted a self-portrait, which seemed to comically comment on her status as an artist.

The show comprised of both startling and memorable pieces that overlapped conceptually within the exhibition space. Instead of opting to align a chronology, an extra layer was peeled off, revealing a fresh look into her practice. The show demonstrated and encouraged a deeper look into the adjective life, hinting clues as to what it might mean to be human.

Yang Ah Ham, Adjective Life in the Nonsense Factory, Artsonje Center, Seoul, 6th March-25th April, 2010.

http://www.artsonje.org/asc

Identity: Eight Rooms, Nine Lives

“What keeps us the same person we were 5 minutes ago?” stated Hugh Aldersey-Williams, the co-curator of Identity, Eight Rooms, Nine Lives. The question of “what?” was then followed by talks on genetics, history, politics, culinary cuisines, medicine and art. As part of the lecture series, Birth and Belonging (26 Feb 2010) sought to underline the interplay of multiple interests in order to unsettle outmoded skepticism and blind sights of fixing one discipline, identity, location, nationality and race (although they criminally missed out on gender and sexuality). The discussion also made so much sense within the context in which this discussion took place, in contemporary London, which embraces cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism. Hence, it made it even more probable that the audience would eventually get into the swing of exclaiming “I am a Londoner who is also x, y, z, who also speaks more two languages, and mind you, I will probably end up being something else one day, God knows (chuckles)”. And hence, the rainbow talk of cultures, regions and ethnicities were ready to go ahead- snap, crackle and pop.

Identity: Eight Rooms, Nine Lives, Wellcome Collection, London, 26 Nov 2009- 06 April

http://www.wellcomecollection.org/whats-on/exhibitions/identity.aspx

Chelsea Art School Interim Show, London, 25-01 April

International Art Galleries, Post-War to Post-Millennium: A Narrative Chronology of Dealers, Artists and Spaces that have Defined Modern Art

This hefty book aims to explore the phenomenon of more than 75 modern art galleries from the 1940s to the present. The size of the book appears to be intimidating, but curators and critics Kirsty Bell, Adam Szymczyk and Jens Hoffmann have made it accessible and easy to read. The editors, Uta Grosenick and Ramar Stange, also wrote a synopsis introducing the development of significant of art galleries, artists and dealers since the post-war period.

On the whole, this was an ambitious attempt to overview the success and establishment of European and American galleries from the 20th century to the present. Yet, they also miss out on the competitive emergence of 'international art galleries'. Likewise, the editors managed to include only four galleries from non-western countries which are mentioned under a broad and opaque subheading entitled 'The New Millennium: Pure Globalisation'.

Then again, the intention of the book was not about contemporary shifts. Rather, the aim was to revalidate and argue the extent in which Western post-war art galleries have influenced economical and historical value of modern art. The editors also acknowledge art galleries in (once) developing countries, when they first began to renew national and international commercial and critical interests in modern art. This is a standard point. Grosenik and Stange underlines that it is no longer possible to conclude the history of international art galleries based in Europe and America. However, their research on developing stages of 'international art galleries in the post-millennium' appears to be too short, even disinterested. As a result, the book ends up undermining the diversity of contemporary international galleries, artists, spaces and dealers who have contributed to the value of art and the art market which is expanding, variable and unpredictable.

To read the original book review, see, Yujin Min, International Art Galleries: Post-War to Post-Millennium, Contemporary Magazine, no. 81, 2006.

International Art Galleries, Post-War to Post-Millennium: A Narrative Chronology of the Dealers, Artists have Spaces that have Defined Modern Art, edited by Uta Grosenick and Raimar Stange (London: Thames and Hudson), 2005

Banksy:

Wall and Piece

Yujin Min, Bansky: Wall and Piece, Contemporary Magazine, 2006, no.81.

Men Suits by Charles LeDrey

LeDray piled on hundred of suits, shirts, ties, clothing racks and hangers in a setting suggestive of a neglected second hand shop. They had been used, run-down and so sad. These were once worthless and disowned objects, but they are now back with a vengeance, meticulously reproduced in a miniature scale.

It is the size that makes them so eerily delightful and affectionate which the artist recreates and rearranges them with an obsession. In one corner, heaps of shirts and laundry bags have been slouched across jumbled up clothing racks and hangers. On the other section, colourful retro-suits and shirts have been arranged in a manner that suggests fixation. The sculptural mode retains a repetitive feature which include spirals, rows, stacks, stripes and overlaps. Visually, they appear to control the objects, forcing them into this ludicrous space.

The objects share intimacy within a confined space. The body on the other hand is missing. It is the mannequin who wears the suit, who stands alone alongside a small table displaying an assortment of ties. The trait of absence suggests something about loneliness. But LeDray comes from a more impersonal approach. As Lingwood has written, his world is carefully constructed, seeking to mediate on appearance, identity and the inevitable social and economic cycle of use, exchange and value.

Men Suits was curated by Art Angel, 11 July-20 September 2009, The Fire Station Chiltern St, London

Miroslow Balka, Tate Modern, London, 13 Oct 2009- 5 April 2010

Miroslow Balka, How It Is, Tate Modern

http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/unilevermiroslawbalka/explore/