Haegue Yang Hardware Store Collages

Annessa Chan:

The hammers, toolboxes, power tools, and pools you see here are actually cut-outs from hardware store product catalogues. When artist Haegue Yang first moved to Germany from Korea, she spoke only basic German. One way she studied the language was by reading these catalogues. The simple, direct use of words and images ended up being the perfect learning tool.

Commercial objects may not seem much to look at, but after spending so much time with them, Yang decided to capture their beauty in a series of collages. Collage is the art of arranging and affixing pieces of material on a flat surface. It was pioneered by Picasso and Georges Braque in the early 1900s. While collage was a popular pastime during this period, it was Picasso and Braque who brought it to the realm of fine art. This innovation opened the door for artists like Yang, who used this technique to explore a wide range of topics.

NARRATOR:

Haegue Yang created a series of works on paper by collaging cutouts from product catalogues. Among them, four works from 2013 are made of images from hardware store catalogues affixed to Chromolux paper. Each work measures about fifty centimetres in height and sixty-nine centimetres in width.

The titles of the four works are Hardware Store Collage—Hellweg Pools #1, Hardware Store Collage—Bauhaus Tool Boxes #1, Hardware Store Collage—Bauhaus Power Tools #1, and Hardware Store Collage—Bauhaus Hammers and Mallets #1. Each work is a collage of images of items from hardware store catalogues, including pools, toolboxes, power drills, and hammers. Some of these images are clustered in spherical shapes or arranged in large diagonal lines, while others scatter and overlap across the entire composition. Set against entirely black or metallic backgrounds, the colourful images stand out vividly, creating a sense of movement. For example, the pools appear to float, the opened toolboxes seem to fly towards you in a chain, the power drills assemble into a robot in mid-air, and the hammers accumulate into a rolling, rotating orb. Let’s talk about two of the collages in more detail:

In Hardware Store Collage—Hellweg Pools #1, twenty-six circular and oval pool images are unevenly dispersed across the composition. The colours of the pools range from brown, white, blue, to white with black stripes, resembling products made of wood, stone, or plastic. The water they hold are varying shades of blue. The pools are polygonal or round, with some styles recurring in different sizes, the largest being about the size of a hand. All of the pools have adults and children swimming or relaxing, the water reaching their waists or chests. The vibrant pools form a stark, eye-catching contrast with the completely black background, and their arrangements evoke drifting and colliding boats.

In Hardware Store Collage—Bauhaus Hammers and Mallets #1, dozens of metal hammers and wooden mallets form a layered cluster in the shape of an orb. Its diameter is about half the width of the work. There are different types of hammers and mallets: some hammers are round-headed or round-reared, while the mallets can have round or pointed heads. This cluster is positioned slightly to the right of centre, near the bottom edge of the composition. The tips of the hammers and mallets are in shades of greyish-white and metallic black, joined to white, red, or wooden brown handles. All the handles aim inward toward a centre point, while the heads face outward, resulting in a spiky, radiating sphere that whirls and turns against a brown background.