Smallest Possible Juxtaposition For her exhibition at the Wiesbaden Bellevue Hall, Haegue Yang realized a work entitled "What I'd love to have at home". A sofa and four sets of metal shelves were borrowed from the retailer and manufacturer respectively and presented in the gallery space. In the sense of 'ready-made', which was practised for the first time in 1914, when Marcel Duchamp transferred a bottle rack to the context of an exhibition, Haegue Yang also frees items of everyday use from their predetermined function. The pieces of furniture now primarily have an aesthetic effect, they appear as sculptures in an institutional context. However, the fact that Haegue Yang's main concern is not repeating the working method of 'ready-made' becomes clear via the title of the piece. The statement "What I'd love to have at home" directs the viewer's attention back to the furniture itself. The sofa was designed by Egon Eiermann in 1968 and is characterised by its reduced and concentrated form. The four light-grey sets of shelves are a plug-in, modular shelf system manufactured by Otto Kind Betriebs- und Bueroeinrichtungen GmbH. They are stable, easy-to-assemble industrial shelves designed in a pragmatic and functional way. The pieces of furniture which, according to the title, the artist would love to possess herself are quite obviously not just any sofa or a random set of shelves; what we have here, moreover, is a classic of the history of design and a high-quality, patented shelf system. The artist thus reveals her own preference in style and aesthetic education. Therefore, it would be possible to interpret the work in the sense of a self-portrait; on the other hand, the selected pieces of furniture, or rather their continuous popularity with certain circles of society, express a collective understanding of form, functionality and rationality: Taste as an expression of cultural and social determination. But the subjunctive in Haegue Yang's title also makes reference to economic conditions. The artist borrows her ideal furniture for the period of the exhibition and presents it, free of any utility value, in an institutional space, while simultaneously drawing one's attention to the fact that she cannot afford these objects in their actual function: namely as items of use in one's own living space. Again, the autobiographical aspect is not in the foreground, instead, "the tension between necessity and desire which is just as present in the private sphere as it is in art practice" (Haegue Yang) is conveyed in a much more general manner. Comparing "What I'd love to have at home" with the original 'ready-made', one notices that here the title implies a return to the world of use, something which finds its adequate, methodical realization in borrowing the exhibits. The artist does utilize the working method of the 'ready-made' as it has become commonplace in art practice in the past sixty years, but her issue is not thematizing the transformation of an object of everyday use to an art object. The question of art versus non-art is not of interest. Instead, Haegue Yang makes use of this shift in the sense of a temporary juxtaposition aimed at drawing one's attention to the problematic of evaluations and conditions, or rather of a general conditionality which is not questioned. Via this 'smallest possible juxtaposition', however, the viewer is at the same time denied an unambiguous or simplifying statement by the artist. Haegue Yang also utilizes this artistic principle in other works. The piece "Moeblische Gegenstaende - AStA Satie" was created as furnishings for a gallery stand at an art fair. The work consists on the one hand of chair, table and bench, on the other of three stacks of photocopied sheets of paper with three different texts placed on the table like leaflets. The pieces of furniture show obvious marks of earlier use and appear to have been arranged in an incidental way. The viewer therefore assumes they are found or borrowed furniture. One of the accompanying texts gives an indirect explanation: "Every day I come upon unexpected, amazing arrangements of objects temporarily placed in public space. These unintentionally created arrangements possess a natural, inspiring, matter-of-course type existence. Among the many different forms of such arrangements, one scenario is bulky refuse ready for collection. (...)". With the other two texts, Haegue Yang develops references on the one hand to Eric Satie's 'Furniture Music', a repetitive composition in which the individual notes are conceived as pieces of furniture filling the room, on the other hand to furnishings in the rooms accommodating pupil participation in school administration and of the Students' Union - AStA. The text describes these furnishings which are usually collected from "old bourgeois furniture" as an expression of "self-realization, provocation and adventure". Here, too, the intervention or shift performed by the artist is minimal: items of everyday use are transported into the context of art - in this case they even retain their functionality, as they are actually used as seats in the fair stand. The different origins of the furnishings remain evident and the various contexts of use of the individual pieces can be experienced precisely by the way they are combined. Through the references developed in the accompanying texts, the individual pieces of furniture as well as the overall arrangement are presented as a complex structure of conditions and evaluations. That we are dealing with an indeed overwhelming network of relations and references is made clear by the open numbering of the sheets. The numbers 3, 4, and 5 are allotted, while the numbers 1 and 2 are missing. The artist does not deliver a key to her encoded work with her texts, but offers contextual links that can be supplemented. It is again important to stress that Haegue Yang's pieces do not deal with questions pertaining to discrepancies between art and non-art objects, even if such an interpretation suggests itself with "Moeblische Gegenstaende - AStA Satie": furnishing a fair stand with items collected from bulky refuse at an art fair otherwise furnished in a consciously elegant way can of course be misunderstood as a provocation. But it is exactly here that the difference between placing in opposition and juxtaposing, as Haegue Yang performs it, seems to manifest itself. Art, or the art market, is not so much understood as an authority worth rebelling against, but as a place of questioning and investigating, as an alternative structure or a niche in society which enables a careful shift of context in the first place. With these shifts or 'smallest possible juxtapositions', Haegue Yang succeeds in revealing and allowing one to experience the structures of social, cultural and economic conditions. As the artist consciously refrains from making her own comparative evaluations, her works always express the alterability of established structures as well. In "Grid Block", this potential to alter established structures becomes visible in an explicit way. The edition consists of a 13-page pad of squared paper. From sheet to sheet, however, either the colour changes or even the grid itself. While thin lines usually mark millimetres and thicker lines centimetres, here the sheet is, for example, divided into fields measuring 1 x 2 millimetres, or the decimal system is replaced by another system of multiplication. The established structure based on millimetre and decimal system is tilted by tiny interventions - again, not as a counter-model but as an offer. The meaning of the established counting and measurement structure as an arbitrary determination thus puts itself in question. Other works, for example the text and photo pieces, are more strongly based on the artist's own cultural or linguistic experiences. But in these works, too, Haegue Yang appears to be less interested in differences than in slightly shifted parallels. They demonstrate alternative cultural or linguistic structures as well as fresh possibilities of transposing, translating and appropriating. Jochen Volz back		Smallest Possible Juxtaposition For her exhibition at the Wiesbaden Bellevue Hall, Haegue Yang realized a work entitled "What I'd love to have at home". A sofa and four sets of metal shelves were borrowed from the retailer and manufacturer respectively and presented in the gallery space. In the sense of 'ready-made', which was practised for the first time in 1914, when Marcel Duchamp transferred a bottle rack to the context of an exhibition, Haegue Yang also frees items of everyday use from their predetermined function. The pieces of furniture now primarily have an aesthetic effect, they appear as sculptures in an institutional context. However, the fact that Haegue Yang's main concern is not repeating the working method of 'ready-made' becomes clear via the title of the piece. The statement "What I'd love to have at home" directs the viewer's attention back to the furniture itself. The sofa was designed by Egon Eiermann in 1968 and is characterised by its reduced and concentrated form. The four light-grey sets of shelves are a plug-in, modular shelf system manufactured by Otto Kind Betriebs- und Bueroeinrichtungen GmbH. They are stable, easy-to-assemble industrial shelves designed in a pragmatic and functional way. The pieces of furniture which, according to the title, the artist would love to possess herself are quite obviously not just any sofa or a random set of shelves; what we have here, moreover, is a classic of the history of design and a high-quality, patented shelf system. The artist thus reveals her own preference in style and aesthetic education. Therefore, it would be possible to interpret the work in the sense of a self-portrait; on the other hand, the selected pieces of furniture, or rather their continuous popularity with certain circles of society, express a collective understanding of form, functionality and rationality: Taste as an expression of cultural and social determination. But the subjunctive in Haegue Yang's title also makes reference to economic conditions. The artist borrows her ideal furniture for the period of the exhibition and presents it, free of any utility value, in an institutional space, while simultaneously drawing one's attention to the fact that she cannot afford these objects in their actual function: namely as items of use in one's own living space. Again, the autobiographical aspect is not in the foreground, instead, "the tension between necessity and desire which is just as present in the private sphere as it is in art practice" (Haegue Yang) is conveyed in a much more general manner. Comparing "What I'd love to have at home" with the original 'ready-made', one notices that here the title implies a return to the world of use, something which finds its adequate, methodical realization in borrowing the exhibits. The artist does utilize the working method of the 'ready-made' as it has become commonplace in art practice in the past sixty years, but her issue is not thematizing the transformation of an object of everyday use to an art object. The question of art versus non-art is not of interest. Instead, Haegue Yang makes use of this shift in the sense of a temporary juxtaposition aimed at drawing one's attention to the problematic of evaluations and conditions, or rather of a general conditionality which is not questioned. Via this 'smallest possible juxtaposition', however, the viewer is at the same time denied an unambiguous or simplifying statement by the artist. Haegue Yang also utilizes this artistic principle in other works. The piece "Moeblische Gegenstaende - AStA Satie" was created as furnishings for a gallery stand at an art fair. The work consists on the one hand of chair, table and bench, on the other of three stacks of photocopied sheets of paper with three different texts placed on the table like leaflets. The pieces of furniture show obvious marks of earlier use and appear to have been arranged in an incidental way. The viewer therefore assumes they are found or borrowed furniture. One of the accompanying texts gives an indirect explanation: "Every day I come upon unexpected, amazing arrangements of objects temporarily placed in public space. These unintentionally created arrangements possess a natural, inspiring, matter-of-course type existence. Among the many different forms of such arrangements, one scenario is bulky refuse ready for collection. (...)". With the other two texts, Haegue Yang develops references on the one hand to Eric Satie's 'Furniture Music', a repetitive composition in which the individual notes are conceived as pieces of furniture filling the room, on the other hand to furnishings in the rooms accommodating pupil participation in school administration and of the Students' Union - AStA. The text describes these furnishings which are usually collected from "old bourgeois furniture" as an expression of "self-realization, provocation and adventure". Here, too, the intervention or shift performed by the artist is minimal: items of everyday use are transported into the context of art - in this case they even retain their functionality, as they are actually used as seats in the fair stand. The different origins of the furnishings remain evident and the various contexts of use of the individual pieces can be experienced precisely by the way they are combined. Through the references developed in the accompanying texts, the individual pieces of furniture as well as the overall arrangement are presented as a complex structure of conditions and evaluations. That we are dealing with an indeed overwhelming network of relations and references is made clear by the open numbering of the sheets. The numbers 3, 4, and 5 are allotted, while the numbers 1 and 2 are missing. The artist does not deliver a key to her encoded work with her texts, but offers contextual links that can be supplemented. It is again important to stress that Haegue Yang's pieces do not deal with questions pertaining to discrepancies between art and non-art objects, even if such an interpretation suggests itself with "Moeblische Gegenstaende - AStA Satie": furnishing a fair stand with items collected from bulky refuse at an art fair otherwise furnished in a consciously elegant way can of course be misunderstood as a provocation. But it is exactly here that the difference between placing in opposition and juxtaposing, as Haegue Yang performs it, seems to manifest itself. Art, or the art market, is not so much understood as an authority worth rebelling against, but as a place of questioning and investigating, as an alternative structure or a niche in society which enables a careful shift of context in the first place. With these shifts or 'smallest possible juxtapositions', Haegue Yang succeeds in revealing and allowing one to experience the structures of social, cultural and economic conditions. As the artist consciously refrains from making her own comparative evaluations, her works always express the alterability of established structures as well. In "Grid Block", this potential to alter established structures becomes visible in an explicit way. The edition consists of a 13-page pad of squared paper. From sheet to sheet, however, either the colour changes or even the grid itself. While thin lines usually mark millimetres and thicker lines centimetres, here the sheet is, for example, divided into fields measuring 1 x 2 millimetres, or the decimal system is replaced by another system of multiplication. The established structure based on millimetre and decimal system is tilted by tiny interventions - again, not as a counter-model but as an offer. The meaning of the established counting and measurement structure as an arbitrary determination thus puts itself in question. Other works, for example the text and photo pieces, are more strongly based on the artist's own cultural or linguistic experiences. But in these works, too, Haegue Yang appears to be less interested in differences than in slightly shifted parallels. They demonstrate alternative cultural or linguistic structures as well as fresh possibilities of transposing, translating and appropriating. Jochen Volz