"While the “dancing object” and “abstraction in motion” are key motifs in Yang’s oeuvre, these are abstractions that do not privilege one vantage point or one material—they are aspects of a larger conception of the “minority” that runs throughout Yang’s works in Strasbourg. For one thing, Taeuberg-Arp herself had long been the neglected partner in her marriage with Jean Arp, and thus within the Dada movement at large. Textiles feature less prominently in the history of abstraction than paintings. Materials such as the macramé, Venetian blinds, origami, the inside linings of envelopes, hardware-store catalogs, the reverse side of a mirror (a piece called Back, 2006), the slightly malformed or “defective” origami objects in the photograph series “Imperfections” (2010) and the hand-knitted sleeves of Roll Cosies – Cash Register Rolls, 50 Meter (2012) are Yang’s veneration of the humble, marginalized and overlooked. You don’t have to name the structures and ideologies that she is pushing back against—or even know that there are any—to appreciate the ways in which Yang is proposing a revised understanding of abstraction, modernism and 20th-century history."
Posted on: Wed, 17 Jul 2013 13:19:45 +0000
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