Haegue Yang Sol LeWitt Upside Down – Structure with Three Towers, Expanded 23 Times, Split in Three 2015
Discover the work of Haegue Yang, who explores the history of conceptual art as shaped by a set of rules
Hague Yang often makes work using everyday domestic items, transforming them in extraordinary ways. This suspended sculpture is made of over 500 Venetian blinds. Yang’s choice highlights the unique sculptural possibilities of these ordinary window coverings. They can be flat or three dimensional, opaque or transparent, compressed or expanded.
This sculpture, made in 2015, references Sol LeWitt (1928–2007), a pioneer of conceptual art who made work by following self-imposed systems. Yang reinterprets his 1986 floor-based sculpture Structure with Three Towers. She replaces the open-sided cubes of LeWitt’s sculpture with Venetian blinds, magnifies the overall structure twenty-three times, divides it into three parts and suspends the work upside down from the ceiling. This process is reflected in the title: Sol LeWitt Upside Down – Structure with Three Towers, Expanded 23 Times, Split in Three.
By connecting her work to that of a well-known artist of an earlier generation, Yang questions conventions of authorship and originality. She borrows and adapts LeWitt’s rules, while translating his structure into an environment for the viewer to walk around, through and under. Her use of the blinds means that the play of light changes as we move around the sculpture. The choice of material also brings in ideas of privacy and visibility.
Meschac Gaba, Art and Religion Room From Museum of Contemporary African Art 1997–2002
Meschac Gaba’s Museum of Contemporary African Art 1997–2002 is composed of 12 room installations that can be shown individually or in groups. Through the work he invites conversation about how museums in Europe and North America show and collect African art. The work is flexible, representing more of a conceptual museum than a physical one. It is a provocation to acknowledge contemporary African art and its exclusion from the Western art historical canon. Gaba has said that ‘my museum doesn’t exist... it’s only a question.’
In this installation Gaba brings together over 75 objects related to various world religions and cultures. Symbols of Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Vodún and other traditional African faiths are arranged on shelves of a cross-shaped wooden structure. It also includes a table and chairs used for Tarot card readings. Art has long played an important role in the teaching and dissemination of religion. Gaba comments that in contemporary Benin, where he is from, most people are poly-religious: ‘Catholics brought Christianity, but for my ancestors Catholicism and Voodoo are not different ... You will see sculptures of angels, of Jesus Christ, and the Mami Wata all in the same house.’
Gallery label, April 2025
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artworks in Haegue Yang
Art in this room
Meschac Gaba
Art and Religion Room From Museum of Contemporary African Art
1997–2002
