I arrived in Venice for the 61st Arte Biennale on Sunday, early enough to attend the opening reception at the Dido Palace on Monday evening. I have visited a number of other Venice Biennales, although this was the first time I had been there for the opening, and at the Bellini in Dido I asked one of the European dealers whether I should deal with the Arsenale the next day or the Giardini. I heard the latter will be crowded on Wednesday. She said: Oh no, I had to go to the Giardini on Wednesday because that is the day all the protests were planned. I didn’t have the nerve to explain that I needed to prioritize art, because I’m from New York City, where conflict isn’t cool. It’s just part of your daily routine, like coffee.
But art and politics do not always have to be in such stark opposition, as explored by “Star-Crossed Rendezvous,” a recently opened exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles that brings together two works by Hae-yang (b. 1971) in the context of composer Isang Yuen (1917-1995), whose work blends Western modernism and Korean traditional music and was performed by the Los Angeles Phil New Music group.
In 1967, the South Korean government’s intelligence agency kidnapped Yoon from West Berlin and accused him of spying for the North. International pressure led to his release after two years in captivity, but he never returned to Korea. At MOCA, Yang presents two pieces in dialogue with Yuen’s music: Star-crossed appointment after Yun (2024), her first work to address Yoon directly and the focus of her recent survey at Hayward Gallery, W Sol LeWitt Upside Down—K123456, expanded 1078 times, multiplied and reversed (2015). In 2024, Yang told Artnet on the occasion of Hayward’s show: “It has been my long-time wish to ‘kick’ Isang Yun out of me.”
Yun’s installation feels like a relief. Yang’s classic aluminum blinds arrive here in burgundy, ochre, blue, olive and silver, hung in stacked volumes and terraces that ascend in jagged steps – a tiered conceptual pyramid. Two theatrical lights move through the action in synchronized choreography for the entire 35 minutes of Yoon’s show Double Concerto (1977), which is repeated with 35 minutes of silence, the kind that comes from being able to stop thinking about something, finally.
LeWitt’s piece on the other side of the gallery resonates with all this by reintroducing neurosis. Here Yang took the structure of LeWitt’s 1997 cube, doubled and inverted his pyramidal set, reconstructing it from monochromatic white curtains illuminated by overhead fluorescent lamps that reference Dan Flavin. You explained what you do in the title, but that can’t capture the way you do more and less at the same time. The curtains transform LeWitt’s precise geometry into something denser and more discreet, cleaner but less expressive by being more complex. In the context of this exhibition, he emphasizes the minimal motivation for dissent, and shows how one does not need to organize a protest to be a revolutionary.
“Heeju Yang: Star-crossed rendezvous“On display at MOCA Grand Avenue in Los Angeles until August 2, 2026.
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