Contemporary artist Haegue Yang is the subject of the solo exhibition Haegue Yang: Changing From From To From at National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, on view from May 27 through September 24, 2023. Named after a poem by the Chinese conceptual artist Li Yuan-chia (1929–1994), the exhibition presents four works that reflect Yang’s ongoing interest in movement, migration, and transformation as she continues to forge connections between disparate locations, periods, and cultures.

At the heart of the exhibition stands Sonic Intermediates – Three Differential Equations (2020), a three-part sculptural ensemble. Each piece pays homage to a pioneering modernist artist—Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975), Naum Gabo (1890–1977), and Li Yuan-chia (1929–1994)—representing a speculative encounter between these figures. Throughout the exhibition, the sculptural trio will be activated by their handles, releasing a rattling sound of bells reminiscent of traditional rituals and ceremonies.
Adorning the surrounding walls is Non-Linear and Non-Periodic Dynamics (2020), a wallpaper collage that features motifs of crashing water and spiraling motion, visualizing the futility of human attempts to control increasingly unpredictable environmental conditions. Yang incorporates references to local Kamberri/Canberra waterways and ancient sites into her design, which serves as reminders of careful land management practices that existed prior to the destructive impact of colonization, extractive industries, and urban development. Prior to the opening of the exhibition, the National Gallery of Australia decided to acquire Sonic Intermediates – Three Differential Equations and Non-Linear and Non-Periodic Dynamics for its permanent collection.

The exhibition also introduces Triple Chalkies (2015), a sculpture donated to the museum by a local collector in 2020. Suspended from the ceiling, the sculpture is characterized by ornamental and geometric patterns, which are conventionally underestimated and rejected in modernism. Emanating from floating clusters of speakers is Genuine Cloning (2020), a sound work that combines a text recited by a cloned version of the artist’s voice with a recording of a real-life event.

To commemorate the opening of the exhibition, a conversation between the artist and curator Russell Storer took place on May 27. Throughout the duration of the exhibition, a series of events, including talks by art historians and screenings of films selected by the artist, will provide visitors with a more comprehensive understanding of the exhibition.

The American contemporary artist Jenny Holzer is the subject of a monumental solo exhibition, titled JENNY HOLZER, at Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Germany. Marking the artist’s first solo exhibition in Germany in a decade, the presentation invites visitors to dive in to Holzer’s oeuvre that explores ideas about war, violence, abuse of power, idealism, and absurdism by using diverse materials including LED, poster, painting, and sculpture.

The exhibition spans K21’s Bel Etage and temporary exhibition galleries, as well as different public areas, introducing 20 works from the Redaction Painting series (created since 2005), 26 marble footstools, LEDs, and posters.

The first space of the exhibition—Bel Etage—presents works from Holzer’s Redaction Painting series. In the series, which translates government documents released by the Freedom of Information Act into paintings using oil on linen, the US state and military papers—already declassified but often heavily redacted—are turned into giant abstractions, with the black blocks of redactions rendered in palladium, gold, and platinum leaf. These paintings are shown alongside the artist’s Lustmord series, which criticizes the practice of war. The highlight of this series is the new LED work titled UKRAINE (2023), which presents the artist’s response to the current Russia-Ukraine war. The work incorporates excerpts from texts including the United Nations reports on war crimes and human-rights abuses in Ukraine, as well as the firsthand testimony of Ukrainian artists and writers.

In the temporary exhibition galleries, visitors can immerse themselves in works created with new techniques and formats, that reinterpret Holzer’s works from the past. Works from Truisms (1977-1979), written in English and German, along with posters from the Inflammatory Essays (1977-82) series, are recreated in the form of a site-specific mural in collaboration with the famous graffiti artist Lady Pink. Meanwhile, the Survival circle—deemed the highlight of the show—grasps the attention of viewers with its monumental scale consisting of 17 Indian red granite benches that were first presented at Holzer’s 1989 solo exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Meanwhile, Holzer also presents her texts in public in collaboration with Ströer—one of the sponsors for this solo exhibition—in the form of billboards installed in Düsseldorf’s major highways, subway stations, and the arrival hall in the airport throughout the exhibition period.

The internationally acclaimed video artist Bill Viola is the subject of an extensive solo exhibition titled Bill Viola at Palazzo Reale in Milan, Italy. Carefully curated by Kira Perov, Viola’s wife and lifelong collaborator, the exhibition features 15 works by the artist, who has continuously explored fundamental and existential themes pertaining to life, death, and the intervening journey throughout his four-decade career.

Viola's artistic practice combines video art with elements of performance, experimental film, and electronic music, resulting in visually striking and emotionally captivating creations. Featuring works that primarily employ slow-motion imagery and sound, the exhibition invites visitors to immerse themselves in contemplation, fostering profound introspection and inner exploration.

The exhibition includes some of Viola’s most significant pieces, such as The Quintet of the Silent (2000), a powerful representation of five individuals undergoing a wave of intense emotion; The Raft (2004), a large-scale video installation that highlights the importance of mutual solidarity in the face of natural disasters and unexpected crises; and the Martyrs series (2014), depicting the origins and transcendence of humanity within the inevitable grip of nature.

The exhibition is accompanied by a comprehensive catalog published by Skira, providing valuable insights and analysis of Viola's oeuvre. Bill Viola runs through June 25, 2023.

The contemporary artist Haegue Yang is the subject of the solo exhibition Haegue Yang: Several Reenactments at the Museum of Contemporary Art S.M.A.K. in Ghent, Belgium. Running from April 22 through September 10, 2023, Several Reenactments marks Yang's first institutional exhibition in Belgium. Pivoting on notions of recurrence and Yang's preoccupation with doubling, mirroring, and dividing, the exhibition utilizes the architectural symmetry of the museum to highlight the obscure, mysterious, and yet inherently logical nature of repetition, establishing a strong interconnectedness between the exhibited works.

Installed in the main hall is Warrior Believer Lover – Version Sonic (2023), the centerpiece of the exhibition. The sculptural group is a new, partial reenactment of Warrior Believer Lover, an installation of 33 Light Sculptures that originally premiered at the Kunsthaus Bregenz in 2011. Forming an expansive panoramic sculptural field across the hall, the Ghent reenactment comprises seventeen Sonic Sculptures that portray non-conformist archetypes. Each work in the sculptural ensemble is delicately adorned with a diverse array of artisanal and industrially manufactured objects, including artificial plants, wigs, and solar lamps, boasting its distinct personality and history. Together, they explore the boundaries between nature and artifice, as well as totemic and ritualistic movements.

The left and right Cabinet Galleries house two different editions of Jahnstraße 5 (2017), presented as a mirrored installation. An extension of Yang’s Appliance Sculptures series, Jahnstraße 5 features groupings of box-like metal structures filled with tangled cables and light bulbs, concealed behind Venetian blinds that display color gradations. By replicating the dimensions, shapes, and placement of heat-generating devices in the artist’s former home in Berlin, such as a water boiler and radiators, Jahnstraße 5 evokes the essential nature of domestic heat while reflecting the artist’s personal abstract experiences of daily life and ideas of home, care, and belonging.

The exhibition also includes a comprehensive selection of other significant works by Yang. Among them is The Source of Spring is in the Trace of Movement (2021), a silkscreen print referencing the historical marquetry floor designed by artist and socialist activist Walter Crane (1845–1915). Also on view are Trustworthies (2010–2020) and Mesmerizing Mesh (2021–), which showcase Yang’s fascination with paper collage techniques and her exploration of symmetry and geometric patterns, and Video Trilogy (2004–2006), which feature three films that depict anonymous cityscapes and self-confessional narratives.

The Australian contemporary artist Daniel Boyd is the subject of the solo exhibition RAINBOW SERPENT (VERSION), held at Berlin’s Gropius Bau. Marking the artist’s first large-scale solo exhibition in Europe, RAINBOW SERPENT (VERSION) showcases 44 paintings and two monumental installations that provide a comprehensive overview of Boyd’s reinterpretation of Eurocentric narratives that have dominated Australian history.

The title of the exhibition, ‘Rainbow Serpent,’ comes from a term that generalizes the various birth stories of different Aboriginal peoples. While the term fails to embrace the cultures’ plurality and multiplicity, Boyd highlights the diversity and individuality of Australia's indigenous peoples by adding the word 'version' behind it.

Works on view display Boyd’s signature technique, inspired by the French philosopher Édouard Glissant. As the canvases are overlaid with clear, convex dots of glue, then covered using black ink, Boyd’s paintings create a visual illusion, making it seem as if the images are resonating. This sparks discourse on Glissant’s thoughts on the ‘right to opacity’—the right to remain undefined by the hegemony of Western conceptions. Meanwhile, the nonlinear exhibition space, which encourages visitors to experience the show following various paths, also represents the artist’s resistance to cultural homogenization. 

RAINBOW SERPENT (VERSION), which runs through July 9th, 2023, is co-curated by Stephaine Rosenthal, director of Gropius Bau, and curator Carolin Köchling. 

Heejoon Lee, one of the artists selected for the 2023 Kumho Young Artist program, is the subject of the solo exhibition Scaffolding, on view from May 5 through June 11, 2023, at the Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul. The Kumho Museum of Art has been organizing the Kumho Young Artist program since 2004, providing support for emerging artists to hold solo exhibitions through an open-call selection process. As one of the six selected artists, Lee presents 14 photo-collage paintings that explore the unrefined, temporary quality of architectural materials and surfaces.

In this exhibition, Lee pushes the boundaries of his artistic exploration beyond his earlier works, which primarily focused on architectural elements. In this endeavor, he incorporates the concept of “scaffolding,” which refers to a temporary structure used in construction, in order to reconstruct the external landscape as abstract images on canvas.

In his new body of work, Lee incorporates photographs of everyday buildings and landscapes, taken by the artist himself. Superimposed on these images are multiple layers of a range of formal elements, including horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines. These elements serve to redefine the spatial composition of the paintings, selectively obscuring or revealing certain parts of the canvas, much like the inked lines or temporary screens seen at construction sites. As these elements converge, they give rise to distinct lines and shapes on the pictorial plane. Together, they evoke a sense of three-dimensional space within a two-dimensional surface, creating a changeable and transitory impression akin to that found at construction sites.

For Scaffolding, the artist has transformed the exhibition space into a temporary environment by covering the floor and walls with construction fabric, as well as by placing a gray Styrofoam chair at the center. By doing so, Lee extends the concept of scaffolding beyond a purely pictorial dimension to encompass the physical space itself. Functioning as a stage set, the reconstructed walls and floor highlight the fluid and shifting nature of the exhibition space.

Quasi-Colloquial, a solo exhibition by the contemporary artist Haegue Yang, is currently on view at the Pinacoteca de São Paulo, Brazil. Marking the artist’s first major solo exhibition in South America and her first solo presentation in Brazil, Quasi-Colloquial takes place at the Pinacoteca Contemporânea, the museum’s new building dedicated to contemporary art. The exhibition is themed around the two conflicting traditions of Brazil, modernism and indigenous culture, and brings together five distinct groups of works based on the artist’s extensive cultural research.

Quasi-Colloquial includes two new works created specifically for the exhibition. One of them is Stacked Corners (2022), which is made of Yang’s signature venetian blinds. Occupying the vast gallery space, the work references the work of Brazilian artist Cildo Meireles, Espaços Virtuais: Cantos (Virtual Spaces: Corners). Suspended from the gallery ceiling, three of the five installations are motorized and rotate above the viewers, while two appear to be standing statically on the floor, demonstrating Yang’s longstanding interest in both physical and potential movement.

Surrounding the exhibition space is Alien Colloquial (2022), a wallpaper collage based on the artist’s eclectic and subjective research on Brazil from the perspective of a foreigner. By cutting and rearranging images of the eyes, ears, and hands of Brazilian artists, Yang creates a combination of fragmented images of Hello Kitty, landscapes, animals, tropical fruits, musical instruments, and machines.

Also on view are Yang’s Sonic Clotheshorses (2018–), which cover drying racks with bells to create different variations; a work from Mesmerizing Mesh (2021–), her hanji collage series centered around counter-authoritarian spiritual orientations such as shamanism; and A Chronology of Conflated Dispersion – Duras and Yun (2018) and A Chronology of Conflated Dispersion – Duras and Orwell (2021), two text-based works that cross-edit the chronologies of three historical figures—the French novelist Marguerite Duras (1914–1996), Korean composer Isang Yun (1917–1995), and British novelist George Orwell (1903–1950)—from a subjective perspective.

Quasi-Colloquial employs the concept of “quasi” to challenge notions of originality, wholeness, and mainstream ideas, while simultaneously highlighting the ways in which Brazil has incorporated Western modernism with its own indigenous lens. The exhibition runs through May 28, 2023.