"No building that truly moves the heart can be created without reflecting life and a strong foundation. Placing the warmth and life of humanity at the base of a work… How will can you perceive the tradition, context and essence of a region, and how will that be conveyed in a building that is to be created? The important thing is to listen to the language spoken by the topography of the land and the 'voice of the wind'."
- From Itami Jun, Architecture and Urbanism 1970-2011
The exhibition ITAMI JUN: Architecture of the Wind showcases the relationship and unity between architecture and art as explored by Itami Jun (1937-2011), a Korean architect in Japan. Comprising the Itami Jun archive donated to the museum and family collections, this retrospective exhibition encompasses his architectural world of over 40 years, extending from his earlier works in Japan in the 1970s to his Jeju projects of later years. This exhibition conveys the spiritual eyes of the architect engraved in his architecture as well as in paintings, calligraphy, and other collections, presenting artifacts of artist's life that cross the border between Korea and Japan embracing architecture and art.
Itami Jun spent his childhood in Shizuoka, Japan and entered the world of architecture by traveling and encountering many other artists. With profound insight into objects, he learned and expressed architecture with the physical senses of touch and drawing as his medium. In the standardized system of industrial society, Itami Jun sought practice contemporary architecture with an anti-modern bent, and pursued the purity of architecture before industrial society. He was fascinated by white porcelain, statues of the Buddha and the Greek Parthenon as he found within the purity of architecture that enhances human contemplation. In an overflow of sleek and cold contemporary buildings, Itami Jun pursued heavy and primitive architecture with a sensation of rawness in the materials; yet, in his Jeju projects of later years, he offers a peaceful and calm architecture. Jeju was his second home after Shizuoka. Both places are symbolic in that they face the ocean, where the winds come from. Itami Jun's works come to a climax as his architecture meets the wind, which is the power of living nature. The Three Art Museums Water, Wind and Stone, his key works, represent the developing beauty of architecture that constantly reacts to nature.
This exhibition is about tracing the voyage of an artist who pursued this 'architecture of the wind'. Each section of the exhibition is like a milestone that helps this unfamiliar voyage. It 'develops' the artist's whole life story, starting with the story of 'origin' that examines the roots of Itami Jun's work consciousness and leads the way from his works in Japan with their remarkably rough and edgy sensibilities, to the Jeju projects that evoke the embrace of the ocean. What shines through in his dark rooms are many records with artifacts of his handiwork. We correspond to his drifting work with the context erased. The stories about places where the buildings are actually located can be found in the textual materials provided. Various places in the exhibit intend to convey the variations of light and dark in Itami Jun's actual architecture as well as his sensitivity about materials. This exhibition seeks to start a discourse about Itami Jun, who has digressed from the context of Korean architectural history regardless of his special work in Korea. Itami Jun explained that architecture is "something that acts as a medium between myself and the new world." His works presented here are a medium for us to face the vivid significance of the ground we stand upon, as well as the places and spaces in which we exist. He was an architect who lived a life drifting from place to place without belonging to either Japan or Korea, and an architect who sought to touch the essence of architecture. We hope that his works provide us the opportunity to look back on the environments of our own lives. As Itami Jun said, "architecture is a paean of people, and it is another nature dedicated for a better life for people in nature."
*image (left)
Three Art Museum 'Stone', 2006
photo by Yong Kwan Kim
© Itami Jun
