Haegue Yang transforms our Watermall with 1012 Venetian blinds

Watch our installation time lapse. Haegue Yang has created Sol LeWitt Upside Down — Open Modular Cubes (Small), Expanded 958 Times, a site-specific work hanging in the Queensland Art Gallery Watermall commissioned for APT8.

Referring to modernist art history, literature, and social and political events, Haegue Yang transforms spaces through light, colour, objects and movement to ensure a constant shift in perception and experience. Yang’s work alludes to the relationship between cultures and language as experienced through translation, migration and diaspora, as well as the formal properties of specific materials.

The 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT8) Exhibition no. 2015.07 Start date 21/11/2015 End date 10/04/2016 Queensland Art Gallery Watermall installation view

The 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT8) Exhibition no. 2015.07 Start date 21/11/2015 End date 10/04/2016 Queensland Art Gallery Watermall installation view / View full image

The 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT8) Exhibition no. 2015.07 Start date 21/11/2015 End date 10/04/2016 Queensland Art Gallery Watermall installation view

The 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT8) Exhibition no. 2015.07 Start date 21/11/2015 End date 10/04/2016 Queensland Art Gallery Watermall installation view / View full image

The 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT8) Exhibition no. 2015.07 Start date 21/11/2015 End date 10/04/2016 Queensland Art Gallery Watermall installation view

The 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT8) Exhibition no. 2015.07 Start date 21/11/2015 End date 10/04/2016 Queensland Art Gallery Watermall installation view / View full image

The 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT8) Exhibition no. 2015.07 Start date 21/11/2015 End date 10/04/2016 Queensland Art Gallery Watermall installation view

The 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT8) Exhibition no. 2015.07 Start date 21/11/2015 End date 10/04/2016 Queensland Art Gallery Watermall installation view / View full image

Sol LeWitt Upside Down – Open Modular Cubes (Small), Expanded 958 Times 2015consists of 1012 white Venetian blinds, arranged into grids and suspended from the ceiling in an inverted and expanded rendition of the ‘open modular cube’ structures, signature works of American conceptual artist Sol LeWitt. First exhibited in New York in 1966, LeWitt’s structures used the reductive form of an open cube as their base unit, which was repeated in stepped and gridded arrangements to produce geometrical objects. LeWitt’s artworks were at once rigorous in construction and elaborate in appearance.

Yang appropriates, up-scales and upturns this classic motif. Where LeWitt’s cubes were solid-edged, open-sided and made-to-order from industrial producers, Yang’s are impressionistic, created by arrangements of ready-made household blinds whose overlapping slats may be read as either open or closed, depending on the position of the viewer. Through the use of domestic materials, Yang moves LeWitt’s aesthetic propositions into the world of everyday experience. She foregrounds shifts involving mass, volume, space and light, and the degree to which, like the diasporic experience, such qualities are constantly under construction.

The Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT)
is the Gallery’s flagship exhibition focused on the work of Asia, the Pacific and Australia.
21 November 2015 – 10 April 2016

Exhibition Founding Sponsor: Queensland Government
Exhibition Principal Sponsor: Audi Australia

Related Stories

  •
    Read •

    Students experience world cultures and histories through APT8

    The development of educational resources at QAGOMA is a collaborative endeavour – and a very enjoyable one. Learning staff work closely with curators, as well as film editors, and design and multimedia teams to create relevant and fun resources for schools. The process is authentic in its relevance to the classroom, as evident in questions and activities generated by teacher specialists from QAGOMA Learning’s Teacher Advisory Group. It is important to us to create meaningful resources that empower teachers to design a visit that will bring artworks to life for their students – both at QAGOMA and in the classroom. For those teachers new to The Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT) – be prepared for its large scale and transformative nature. The artworks will have a high impact on student visitors, creating lasting memories. In this APT, students can be captivated in a similar fashion by large scale installations by artists Asim Waqif and Haegue Yang, who use wood and venetian blinds respectively, or be mesmerised by Yumi Danis (We Dance), which features song and dance from Melanesia. For APT8, one of the challenges for staff was to consider ways of translating performance, video and kinetic art through a printed resource. The inclusion of short video introductions by curators assisted to demonstrate the participatory nature of performance and movement being explored by exhibiting artists. So why not investigate the resources yourself? There are customised Student Resources and Teacher Resources for primary and secondary levels, as well as a generic School Resource suitable for all levels with hyperlinks in the school resource to the curatorial video introductions. School Resource (suitable for all levels) Primary Student Resource Primary Teacher Resource Secondary Student Resource Secondary Teacher Resource Video introductions Introduction to APT8 Yumi Danis (We Dance) project APT8 is a must-see exhibition for students of the Arts, Humanities and Languages. The interactive activities in APT8 Kids mean that students can form their own personal connections to art and ideas from the Asia Pacific region. We invite educators to meet curators and APT8 artists at the upcoming teacher professional development program arranged by QAGOMA Learning- a popular event every February to kick start the school year. APT8 Look Out Teacher Program Saturday 6 February 2016 Book online The accompanying APT8 publication features a suite of richly illustrated essays and a children’s book accompanies APT8 Kids onsite. The Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT) is the Gallery’s flagship exhibition focused on the work of Asia, the Pacific and Australia. 21 November 2015 – 10 April 2016 Exhibition Founding Sponsor: Queensland Government Exhibition Principal Sponsor: Audi Australia APT8 Education Major Sponsor: Santos GLNG
  •
    Read •

    Looking back — extraordinary Triennial Watermall projects at QAG

    We look back at all eleven previous Asia Pacific Triennial’s memorable installations on the Queensland Art Gallery Watermall, dating back to the first Triennial in 1993. The Queensland Art Gallery was designed in harmony with the Brisbane River, and the Watermall runs parallel to the waterway that threads through the city. This grand indoor water feature is a visitor favourite — the perfect backdrop for spectacular contemporary art installations. Do you have a favourite Watermall artwork from the Triennial? 11th Asia Pacific Triennial | 30 November 2024 – 27 April 2025 Thai artist Jai Inn carefully orchestrated a series of works to inhabit the Watermall. Drawing on the structures of suspended ‘totems’, a scroll and a tunnel, Jai Inn’s response to the space’s unique architecture explores time and transformation. With these large-scale sculptural works, the artist has created layered views that reveal and conceal to enact portals between worlds. 10th Asia Pacific Triennial | 4 December 2021 – 25 April 2022 Kamruzzaman Shadhin has been at the forefront of developing new possibilities for contemporary art in Bangladesh. Suspended over the Watermall for the tenth Triennial in 2021, The fibrous souls was a collaborative installation with the Gidree Bawlee Foundation of Arts. Constructed with 70 giant shikas — embroidered, reticulated bags typically made of jute strings that are tied to an exposed beam — the installation explores part of Bengal’s colonial history, inspired by the families that followed the railway tracks after the British East India Company established the Eastern Bengal Railway. Shadhin worked with 13 women along with a handful of local craftspeople to create the pots and connecting jute ropes that laid out a map of the historic railway. 9th Asia Pacific Triennial | 24 November 2018 – 28 April 2019 My forest is not your garden was a collaborative installation by Singaporean artists Donna Ong and Robert Zhao Renhui. A critical take on attitudes towards the natural world of the tropics, this work for the ninth Triennial in 2018 integrated Ong’s evocative arrangements of artificial flora and tropical exotica — titled From the tropics with love — with Zhao’s The Nature Museum, an archival display narrating aspects of Singapore’s natural history, both authentic and fabricated. 8th Asia Pacific Triennial | 21 November 2015 – 10 April 2016 South Korean artist Haegue Yang transforms spaces through light, colour, objects and movement to ensure a constant shift in perception and experience. Installed for the eighth Triennial in 2015, Sol LeWitt Upside Down — Open Modular Cubes (Small), Expanded 958 Times consists of 1012 white Venetian blinds, arranged into grids and suspended from the Watermall ceiling in an inverted and expanded rendition of the ‘open modular cube’ structures, signature works of American conceptual artist Sol LeWitt (1928–2007). Yang has created an arrangement of ready-made household blinds whose overlapping slats may be read as either open or closed, depending on the position of the viewer. 7th Asia Pacific Triennial | 8 December 2012 – 14 April 2013 Ressort by Chinese artist Huang Yong Ping, was one of the signature works of the seventh Triennial in 2012. The gigantic aluminium snake skeleton dominated the Watermall as it spiraled 53 metres from the ceiling to the floor, coming down from the sky with its skull floating just above the water, metaphorically linking sky and water. Part of a series of large-scale sculptures that depict a snake or dragon, a central symbol in Chinese culture, as well as in many other countries around the world, the work plays on different interpretations of the snake, from creation and temptation to wisdom and deception. 6th Asia Pacific Triennial | 5 December 2009 – 5 April 2010 Pakistani artist Ayaz Jokhio’s major architectural project in the Watermall for the sixth Triennial in 2009, entitled a thousand doors and windows too…, took the form of an octagonal building, with each wall containing a mihrab, the niche in a mosque that points toward Mecca. The soaring structure takes its inspiration from a verse by Bhittai, the great Sindhi Sufi poet of the late Mughal era. Jokhio considers the work a piece of ‘conceptual architecture’; a physical translation of Bhittai’s expression of the omnipresence of God. 5th Asia Pacific Triennial | 2 December 2006 – 27 May 2007 Composed of 270 000 crystal pieces, Boomerang — first exhibited in the fifth Triennial in 2006 — is an imposing example of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s strategy of working playfully across cultural contexts. Shaped after the iconic Australian Aboriginal throwing tool, this oversized, intensely lit, waterfall-style chandelier filled the soaring space above the Watermall as if it were in a hotel’s grand foyer. Ai Weiwei has a history of bringing everyday things into art museum settings. He has long acknowledged the influence of early-twentieth-century artist Marcel Duchamp, who famously brought otherwise banal objects into a gallery and declared them art, thereby creating the ‘readymade’. Accordingly, Boomerang takes the chandelier, with its connotations of wealth and opulence, and enlarges it to absurd scale, shaping it into the motif of an object associated with exotic conceptions of Australia. 4th Asia Pacific Triennial | 12 September 2002 – 27 January 2003 Narcissus garden is an incarnation of the reflective work that has held Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama’s attention for many years. Kusama creates a floating carpet of mirrored spheres, the balls reflecting the building’s architecture back onto itself from an infinite number of angles, creating a world that is both trapped and indefinite. Comprising approximately 2000 mirrored balls, the spectacular and mesmerising installation is shaped by both the currents and the limits of the water. 3th Asia Pacific Triennial | 9 September 1999 – 26 January 2000 The third Triennial in 1999 emphasised artists whose works crossed boundaries between past and future, and between traditional and contemporary life, with many inviting audience interaction. Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang explored the meeting of cultures with his narrow bamboo suspension bridge Bridge Crossing. Spanning the Watermall, the crossing made you consider whether to back up and make way for the other...