Sonic Clotheshorses seems to manifest a new sculptural approach, evidently combining two of Yang’s previous work cycles: “Sonic Sculptures” (ongoing since 2013) and “Non-Indépliables” (ongoing since 2006). On one hand, while the emblematic characteristics of “Sonic Sculptures’” brass or nickel-plated bell-covered surface are crucial, the shape of a moment, frozen in time, of a foldable everyday object, namely a drying rack used in the “Non-Indépliables” series, is also an equally significant feature of Sonic Clotheshorses. The shape of Sonic Clotheshorses, made of metal structure and mesh, is developed by ‘wrapping variations’ around an ordinary model of a drying rack. So far, over 40 variations have been conceived as a formal development of the Non-Indépliables series.

Yang understands Sonic Clotheshorses as a game, which will end by exhausting its variations without winning or losing. Implicated by the equipment of handles on all sides, Sonic Clotheshorse inherently contains possible performativity between a human performer and objects. Handles here become an important metaphor for a mediation between the human body and the objects, and activating them results in a movement. Reinforced by the subtle rattling sound of the countless bells, Sonic Clotheshorses renders the boundaries between the inanimate nature of the object and the vigor of the human body as a potentiality of performativity in countless variations of visual shapes.