MATRIX 285 / Young Joon Kwak: Resistance Pleasure
August 7, 2024–December 15, 2024, Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive
Curated by Anthony Graham, Senior Curator.
Through sculpture, installation, and performance, Young Joon Kwak (b. 1984, Queens, New York) imagines new forms of representation, resisting traditional categories based on assumptions of race and gender. Kwak often presents the body in states of transformation, emphasizing how it changes, grows, and shapeshifts.
MATRIX 285 / Young Joon Kwak: Resistance Pleasure premieres a newly commissioned installation by the Los Angeles-based artist. In a group of three sculptures, Kwak combines fragmented body parts to suggest a series of movements throughout the space. Each sculpture is made from the artist's own body and with friends and collaborators. Cast using a mixture of resin, metal, and other synthetic and organic materials, the works are covered in rhinestones and crystals. These distinctive surfaces and materials draw attention to corporeal details and postures. Kwak's transformations and disorientations of the figure invite close and careful acts of looking.
With its darkened walls, reflective black floor, and musical score, Resistance Pleasure transforms the gallery into a kind of dance club. The space is illuminated by two new neon pieces, each depicting a hand flashing between different gestures. As in all of Kwak's works, these prompt us to consider the ways the body communicates meaning and the complex ways we see and recognize one another. Through this choreography of bodies, light, and sound, Kwak proposes Resistance Pleasure as a communal space in which hope, loss, healing, and protest can be experienced all at once.
Read/download exhibition brochure.
Listen/download musical score: Soft Revolt Jamz by Xina Xurner with Johanna Hedva, Anna Luisa, and Dorian Wood.
