For this tenth iteration of the
Garage Exchange Vienna-Los Angeles exhibition series, former Artist-in-Residence Jun Yang works together with L.A. artist Bruce Yonemoto.
Overlaps in the distinct practices of the two participants—especially in their treatments of history—are identified and enhanced via the sculptures, film, and photographs installed throughout the Garage Top space. Yang presents his film
The Age of Guilt and Forgiveness (2016) as an attempt to look at Hiroshima seventy years after the end of World War II, highlighting the burden of history in the context of contemporary Japan. Balanced with Yonemoto’s
Made in Occupied Japan (1998-ongoing)—eight porcelain figurines of imperial era Europeans with accompanying colonized peoples—and his photographs showing Asian men wearing U.S. Civil War uniforms from both armies,
North South East West (2007), a viewer is pulled into considering how history is something constantly being edited and re-written in the present.
Yang’s film is shown within the installation
A Maze and Observatory as a Memorial to the Past, which references the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and the Jantar Mantar observatory in Jaipur, India. The large-scale staircases and pedestals are counterbalanced by Yonemoto’s sculptural works of Kintsugi, the art of fixing broken pottery with a lacquer resin infused with powdered gold that the artist has adopted for broken contemporary objects and mass-produced commodities—an act of rebirth, renewal, and reconsideration in line with any other historical endeavor.
About Garage ExchangeIn order to expand the cultural exchange at the core of the Artists and Architects-in-Residence program, The Austrian Federal Chancellery and the MAK Center invite Austrian and Vienna-based alumni residents to collaborate with L.A. artists and architects of their choosing at the Garage Top at the Mackey Apartments.
Previous exhibitions at the Mackey Garage Top:
Morgan Fisher / Karina Nimmerfall
22.4.–26.6.2016
Marko Lulic & Sam Durant
12.11.2015–5.3.2016
James Benning, and Nicole Six & Paul Petritsch. Fictitious Tales about the History of Earth
1.5.–29.8.2015
Andreas Fogarasi & Oscar Tuazón. Black Earth
7.11.2014–28.2.2015
Gerhard Treml & David Lamelas & Kaucyila Brooke. The Eden's Edge Project
18.4.2014–16.8.2014
Constanze Ruhm & Christine Lang and First Office
8.11.2013–1.3.2014
Bernhard Sommer & Neil M. Denari. Smooth Matter
19.04.2013–10.08.2013
Hans Schabus & The Center for Land Use Interpretation. Double Crossings
16.11.2012–2.3.2013
Sonia Leimer & Stephanie Taylor with Barbara Hammer. Bend a Bow
5.6.–22.9.2012
This exhibition series is made possible by the Austrian Federal Chancellery.
