COLOGNE.- In 2018, the Gesellschaft für Moderne Kunst am Museum Ludwig will recognize the artist Haegue Yang with the Wolfgang Hahn Prize. Since 1994, the prize has been awarded annually for an oeuvre that has consistently and substantially continued to develop and is recognized by international experts.

The award ceremony will take place during Art Cologne on April 17, 2018. The prize includes the acquisition of a work or series of works by the artist for the collection of the Museum Ludwig. In addition, an exhibition will be realized and a publication will be released.

Haegue Yang was born in 1971 in Seoul, South Korea. She lives there and in Berlin. She is the first Asian artist to be awarded the prize.

The jury for the 2018 Wolfgang Hahn Prize included this year’s guest juror Christina Végh, director of the Kestner Gesellschaft in Hanover; Yilmaz Dziewior, director of the Museum Ludwig; Mayen Beckmann, chairwoman of the Gesellschaft für Moderne Kunst; as well as Gabriele Bierbaum, Sabine DuMont Schütte, Jörg Engels, and Robert Müller-Grünow, board members of the Gesellschaft für Moderne Kunst. Mayen Beckmann on the decision: “There were three artists in the final round this year, which involved a long and in-depth debate. With Haegue Yang, the transformative element that oscillates between materiality and emptying was the decisive factor: she compellingly realizes this difficult-to-grasp phenomenon both conceptually and aesthetically. The awarding of the Wolfgang Hahn Prize is essentially about recognizing art that points beyond the present.”

Christina Végh, director of the Kestner Gesellschaft in Hanover, on the selection: “Haegue Yang exemplifies an artistic practice that does not merely continue to develop the concept of sculpture and installation. Rather, Yang places contradictory and often conflicting world views in the globalized world in relation to one another without playing one off against the other. She often uses industrially manufactured objects taken from everyday life, separates them from their respective function, and brings them together into large-scale new configurations. These precise placements mutate into abstract new structures in which cultural codes of East and West are placed in dialogue alongside and with one another, and a peculiar archaic element is brought to light.”

Yilmaz Dziewior, Director of the Museum Ludwig: “There are numerous points of commonality between Haegue Yang’s works and the collection of the Museum Ludwig. These range from Minimalism to Conceptual Art, and from classical sculpture to participatory elements. At the same time, Haegue Yang succeeds in giving her works very sensual qualities. I have been following her work for many years and am a great admirer of her consistency. I would even venture to argue that Yang also takes up certain positions of Fluxus art, which was very significant to the collector Wolfgang Hahn. This important school is currently also on view in our exhibition Art into Life! Collector Wolfgang Hahn and the ’60s, which runs until September 24.”

Once again in 2018, BAUWENS and Ebner Stolz, two companies based in Cologne, will support the evening of the award ceremony, the presentation at the Museum Ludwig, and the publication. This is an annual commitment that began in 2016.

Haegue Yang was born in 1971 in Seoul, South Korea. She graduated in 1994 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Seoul National University, and that same year she came to Germany to continue her studies at the Städelschule in Frankfurt under Georg Herold, which she completed in 1999 as a master class student. Beginning in the winter semester of 2017/18, Yang herself will serve as a professor at the Städelschule.

As a daughter of a writer and a journalist, Haegue Yang grew up in the so-called era of democratization in South Korea as part of the first generation to be able to study under a democratic government.

Her latest institutional solo exhibitions took place in the following institutions, among others: Center Pompidou, Paris (2016); Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg (2016); Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2015); Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul (2015); Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn (2011); Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2013); Kunsthaus Bregenz (2011); New Museum, New York (2010); Westfälisches Landesmuseum, Münster (2005).

In the last ten years, she participated in numerous important group exhibitions at venues including the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Strasbourg (2016), the Biennale de Montréal (2016), the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum in New York, Documenta 13 (2012), the Venice Biennale (2009), and the Seoul Metropolitan Museum of Arts (2004). In Germany Yang had her first institutional solo exhibition at the Hessisches Landesmuseum in 2004 under the title Kasse, Shop, Kino und Weiteres. Early exhibitions took place at Galerie Kolster in Frankfurt and Galerie Barbara Wien in Berlin, among others. At the latest with her participation in the fifty-third Venice Biennial (2009), Haegue Yang became internationally renowned. She represented South Korea with her installation Condensation and also participated in the major thematic show Fare Mondi at the Arsenale.

In 2007, Yang was awarded the Baloise Art Prize, and in 2001 she received the Maria Sibylla Merian Prize from the state of Hesse.