SPACE October 2026 (No. 707)
Founded in Dijon, France, in 1977, the Consortium Museum will mark its 50th anniversary in 2027. The current building, which reopened in 2011 after renovation and extension by Ban Shigeru and Jean de Gastines, is now due for refurbishment. With construction anticipated around the institution’s anniversary, the Consortium Museum has chosen not to commemorate the occasion with a retrospective in Dijon. Instead, it is revisiting its history through new venues and formats, collaborating with artists, galleries, and institutions with which it has developed relationships over the years. As the first project, ‘Up Against the Walls!’ is on view at The Page Gallery in Seoul from Aug. 26. The exhibition brings together 36 works by nine artists who have been associated with Consortium Museum at different points in its history, from John Armleder, who has participated in more than 20 exhibitions in Consortium Museum since 1983, to Ángela Ferrari, who began working with the museum in 2026.
Isabella Ducrot’s works extend horizontally along the long wall ©Joel Moritz
Kim Seungduk and Franck Gautherot, Co-Directors of Consortium Museum, proposed focusing on works that directly engage with the walls, taking advantage of the spatial characteristics of The Page Gallery’s white-cube spaces, which are divided by walls and rise more than five metres high. This approach also resonates with the museum’s longstanding interest in experimenting with the conditions of exhibition spaces. The participating artists were therefore invited to produce new works or reconfigure existing ones specifically for the gallery. Upon entering the exhibition, works by artists of different generations and working with contrasting materials face each other have been placed across the walls on either side of the entrance. The exhibition’s oldest participating artist, Isabella Ducrot, presents a horizontally unfolding collage made from lightweight, flexible paper and textiles. In contrast, Ángela Ferrari, the youngest participant, has created a monumental triptych scaled to the full height of the wall and installed vertically. Occupying two walls of the same dimensions, five metres high and approximately 20 meters long, the two works are installed in contrasting ways, naturally drawing visitors’ attention across the space.
Inside a box-like gallery, Ugo Rondinone’s thanx 4 nothing (2013) has been installed as a multi-channel video work featuring the artist’s longtime partner, the poet John Giorno. In the video work, Giorno recites a poem written for his 70th birthday, offering thanks to all as he reflects on his life: love and loss, friends and enemies, death, and spiritual experience. Rondinone has long explored the repetition of everyday images or a single figure, using the scale and placement of his works to draw viewers into their atmosphere. Here, videos of Giorno wearing a black tuxedo and a white tuxedo are projected onto two opposing walls. Visitors stand between the projections, turning from one figure to the other, as the two walls become integral to the work’s structure.
Exhibition view of ‘Up Against the Walls!’ ©Kim Hyoeun
A narrow passage between the box-like galleries, previously used only for circulation and never before as an exhibition space, has also been occupied by a poster installation by M/M (Paris). The 42 posters overlap, partially obscuring one another, encouraging visitors to walk through the corridor and experience a sequence of images rather than stop in front of a single work. As the corridor becomes a place for viewing rather than simply a route between galleries, the exhibition makes the space itself as visible as the works on display. Looking up at high walls, walking between long parallel surfaces, and standing between two facing projections bring the gallery’s underlying structure, normally receding behind the artworks, into view. ‘Up Against the Walls!’ ultimately directs attention to the exhibition space itself. The exhibition runs Oct. 30.
