This exhibition derives from dim childhood memories of playing games - a game of marbles, a game of jump rope – in the surplus space between houses, and memories of exercising our imagination in a sequestered space or isolated corner. I used to unfold a stretch of my imagination in a tent made by connecting the corners of a quilt to a door handle with string, hanging out with my elder brother and sister. The space was at the time like a palace in a celebrated painting or a fortress on a battlefield. The place was an atopia - a place which does not have territorial borders – in my memory with special meaning.

Such an unusual concealed space in and around my house was the starting point of new games or source of imagination. Applying such childhood memories to an exhibit concept, this exhibition is an attempt to explore the hidden spaces of the museum, and reinterpret the space anew, promoting fracture and disharmony. I try to bring life to the purpose of curating the exhibition with minimum works displayed at the exhibit hall, stressing blank space against a background of architectural space, and attempt a parasitism and coexistence by involving aesthetics within empty space and preexisting structures. A reference for this work is Architecture from the Outside, a collection of philosophical thoughts on architecture by philosopher Elizabeth Grosz. This book is adopted as a reference to complement the limit of my individual ideas and elicit diverse discourses.

In this book Grosz advises us to contemplate architecture from a philosophical perspective. With this I intend to see both architecture and philosophy from the outside of the border, not as a subordinated other to another counterpart. A wide variety of situations and theories deriving from this background are laid on the same line with the items initially chosen to be exhibited, serving as momentum to expand mutually associated discourse and curatorial concept. If this exhibition is likened to architecture, this book has assumed the role of a curatorial frame and structure, giving a projection to the exhibition by adding the flesh of a concept. The curatorial concept and exhibition space are classified by two key expressions.

With the first key expression, “converted place-ness”, the exhibition makes an attempt at architectural, artistic contemplation on existence and coexistence through a modeling involvement in actual space i.e., inside, outside places or interstices between places. Works are constituted in a new, awkward place by lending such elements as time difference, sunlight, and temperature as visual landscapes and natural phenomena of the place, referring to the implications of and metaphors for contemplation on past and future places through architectural self-understanding.

With the second key expression, “experienced temporality”, the exhibition showcases invisible unidentified space on a philosophical backdrop. Referring to Jacques Lacan’s space of physical desire, Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction of dichotomous structures between form and content, origin and purpose, representation and reality, and Gilles Deleuze’s nomadism as movement, practice, and behavior, the exhibition has been re-visualized through artists’ productive involvement.

In terms of the established form of exhibition, this art show has many elements beyond my comprehension. There is no architecture in the exhibition addressing architecture as subject matter, there are lots of empty spaces in the venue, and there is no conspicuous lighting focused on the works. Instead, indirect lighting was adopted. Some works are set in ambiguous places on the inner and outer spaces of the buildings. Some cannot be understood without description, and other work has been inserted between the buildings. An unused door was adopted as the subject matter of a work, and a hidden path to the museum was used to display artwork of abandoned banners. An attempt to replace fresh water with seawater is made in a work, and shoe-shaped objects are set in a place inaccessible to viewers.
- By Sungjin Son, Curator of Seoul Olympic Museum of Art

*image (left)
Sungyeon Park
Talking Doors, 2013
wool, sensor, computer, speaker, dimensions variable
courtesy of the artist