Nilbar Güreş

• Secession, Vienna, Austria
• 20.09.–17.10.2024

Artist in the exhibition: Nilbar Güreş; Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian; Kyungah Ham; Young In Hong; ikkibawiKrrr; Jane Jin Kaisen; Joon Kim; Lee Bul; Lee Kit; Mikael Levin; Minouk Lim; Moon Kyungwon & Jeon Joonho; Adrián Villar Rojas; Ramiro Wong; Haegue Yang; Tomoko Yoneda; Jin-me Yoon; Min Yoon

The Vienna Secession is delighted to host the major group exhibition Forms of the Shadow; curated by Sunjung Kim, Artistic Director of the Art Sonje Center in Seoul. As an artist-run institution dedicated to the display of contemporary art in all of its manifestations, the Secession is proud of its history as a preeminent global centre for the presentation of new creative ideas and its concomitant engagement with the most urgent concerns of our time. Confronting the complex realities of life and current global challenges, we believe a core part of our mission is to grapple with questions of cultural and social policy, and to showcase ambitious visions that spark public debate. These concerns are precisely encapsulated by Forms of the Shadow. The exhibition casts light on contemporary shadows unveiled by the global pandemic, the climate crisis, and geopolitical tensions. Through this thematic lens, it invites viewers to reflect upon the interconnectedness of our world and the complexities of navigating through turbulent times. By shedding light on the ever-shifting nature of shadows and their metaphorical significance in witnessing the passage of time, the exhibition prompts reflection on the intricate layers of human existence.

The works on view in Forms of the Shadow are distributed across three clusters. The first features a diverse range of artistic expressions that explore geopolitical tensions, notably focusing on the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). These range from Minouk Lim's military blanket installation to Lee Bul's steel tower and Kyungah Ham's intricate embroidery. Further on, the challenges and connections inherent within wider temporal and intellectual landscapes are examined in Jin-me Yoon’s multi-channel video work Beneath (2012), which depicts the artist struggling to traverse the historical and geographical coordinates that define and link fin-de-siècle Habsburg, and modern-day Vienna.

Much like how a shadow moves across a landscape during the day, the exhibition drifts and extends beyond the Korean peninsula. In the foyer of the Secession, visitors are greeted by a site-specific floor painting composed by Iranian artists Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian that evokes the layers of the earth. The exploration of geopolitical tensions is also pursued further in Nilbar Güreş’s video documenting her visit to her father’s hometown in East Anatolia, the homeland of Kurdish and Alevi minorities. Similar tensions then play out across time and space in the Argentinian artist Adrián Villar Rojas’s large-scale installation featuring a NASA lunar exploration robot holding a scale miniature of Michelangelo’s David in its hand, flanked on either side by two monoliths on which a series of flags are draped. These recall the Apollo 11 moon landing and, by extension, the competition of the Cold War era. By making manifest what was once considered beyond the scope of human endeavour, the work alludes to the misguided utopian dreams that circulated around the Cold War and that are in turn at the very root of the tragedies that beset the Korean peninsula until today. The shadow is both absent and undeniably pervasive in Tomoko Yoneda’s haunting photographs of sites such as the location of the D-Day landings at Normandy or the cliffs where Japanese soldiers committed suicide after the American landings in Saipan, as well as in the faces of the “celebrated” statues of East Asian figures which intermingle with portraits taken of everyday people in Young In Hong’s scenic fabric work Double Encounter. 

While this first group of works embodies a melancholic sense of hope for the future, subsequent groupings uncover further tragic or uncomfortable truths about life and death. For example, Jane Jin Kaisen’s work juxtaposes scenes of a funeral with those of lush nature, while Lee Kit’s projections, sounds, and various abandoned objects or Ramiro Wong’s suitcases reflect upon the prospect of being an outsider. Elsewhere, the unlikely pairing and tragic deaths of German Green Party founders Petra Kelly and former Wehrmacht officer Gert Bastian are told through a moving abstract monochrome installation by Haegue Yang.

The final part of the exhibition is spread across both the Secession and the nearby Korean Cultural Centre and is dedicated to the concept of nature reclaiming areas once disturbed by human intervention – this is especially evident in the DMZ, which has remained inaccessible for over 70 years. Contrasting with the human-dominated spaces elsewhere in the show, this section focuses on the way in which plants and animals have been able to retake territories that have, for a variety of reasons, become uninhabitable by humans. Collectively illustrating the resurgence of life, these artworks include Joon Kim’s haunting soundscape of the natural ecosystem that has continued to exist along the Southern Limit Line of the DMZ, while the sound of artillery shells – symbolizing the ongoing Cold War – punctuates the depiction of DMZ flora in ikkibawiKrrr’s film Rhapsody. This work is screened in the gallery containing Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze. Upstairs in the Kabinett space, Min Yoon's sculptures of fallen leaves and Moon Kyungwon & Jeon Joonho’s two-channel film installation News from Nowhere: Freedom Village (2021) further probe the organic and human-made structures that appear to take on a life of their own within the literal no man’s land of this border region between North and South Korea. 

Enacting a different sort of geographic shift, the works on display at the Korean Cultural Centre further explore the relationship between nature and humans. Young In Hong’s White Cranes and Snowfall (2024) and Jin-me Yoon’s video Dreaming Birds Know No Borders (2021) place birds centre-stage, as migratory and transitory agents for whom borders pose no barrier. Elsewhere, Mikael Levin's series Mine Sublime (2015) focuses on the precarity of life and death in the DMZ, highlighting the stark contrast between military fortifications and serene rice paddies interlaced with minefields. Finally, the imbricated nature of all existence on the planet is evident in Minouk Lim’s fragile sculpture Mom (2024). Comprised of terracotta powder, wild liquorice – whose roots are consumed as tea in Korea – and dried scandia moss, the work resembles a maternal human form holding a cane. Recalling the Korean word “지의류”, which means “lichen” but literally translates as “cloth of the earth”, Mom symbolizes the solitude and isolation brought about by the erection of borders and barriers, while simultaneously pointing towards the redemptive qualities of maternal love.

Traversing both historical and geographical boundaries, Forms of the Shadow offers nuanced insights into the resilience of nature amidst human intervention as well as the enduring pursuit of hope among adversity. Sculptures, paintings, embroideries, and performances invite viewers to immerse themselves in a sensory journey that delves deep into the intricate layers of human experience, revealing the perpetual dance between light and shadow that defines our collective travels on this planet. 

Secession