[Column] Exhibition Space 1: The Entrance of the Exhibition
written by
Yoon Wonhwa
edited by
Park Semi
The headquarters for Sindoh in Seongsu-dong is home to the exhibition space the Sindoh ART SPACE. Unlike other in-house corporate galleries, which generally accommodate a separately designated space on their ground floor, the Sindoh ART SPACE has a slightly tricky entrance as its exhibitions are housed in the extended corridors of its office spaces. For those of us who are not employees, the space can only be accessed by taking an elevator after checking out an entry pass at the back-gate reception, weaving through a route of mingled emotions such as slight anxiety, curiosity and pride – dictated by the underlying question ‘what could possibly be here?’. First time visitors are taken aback by the location of the art gallery. Nevertheless, the term ‘gallery’ in architecture has always implied a corridor or passageway, reminiscent of the exhibition spaces in one of the oldest museums in the world – the Galleria degli Uffizi in Firenze – attached to the offices of the Medici family. These spaces served a light visual feast to guests as they awaited their meeting, which in turn lent a distinct aura of grandeur to the owner. Meanwhile, visitors surrounded by such splendor could slowly walk around, pausing in front of whatever caught their eye, and, at this moment, could be diverted from their original path and redirected towards a virtual place elsewhere. The establishment of this new destination renders the exhibition as an independent program, no longer restricted to a more ornamental or decorative role within an architectural space.
Empirically speaking, an exhibition is a visual device to ensure something is seen. An exhibition is built around a series of decisions related to what must be seen and why, and accordingly how such objects may be seen, all of which serves diverse interests and needs. While it may sound cynical, specific artefacts placed in an exhibition venue are not the principal subjects. For instance, a museum of history must showcase the past, and each of the artefacts are therefore activated as vehicles, inviting us to journey into the non-accessible past. It is only once such objects are cloaked in an aura of splendor that we finally see them as valuable relics. The clearer the objective of their inclusion in a given display, the more likely it is that the exhibition will be something more than an exhibition, and become a threshold leading to another place. Industrial expos are passageways connected by companies and their composite industries; in other words, the series of productive processes deriving utility from man and nature. Within the twisting passageways (or ‘galleries’) of an expo, visitors hope to reach the other person they need to meet, or put simply, to discover a point of connection with the future.
For a while, all contemporary exhibitions seemed to resemble industrial expos and history museums, with no exception for art and culture exhibitions, including art, design and architecture. However, such exhibitions put aside everyday principles that might limit the potential of past or future worlds, preferring to showcase their own field of work and to benefit financially. In general, design exhibitions forge relationships between service providers and consumers, while architecture exhibitions establish connections between the outside environment and those who construct and reside within it. Put differently, exhibitions propose a model of a fantastical and logical world, which has been reconfigured by variables deemed significant from the perspective of a given position. Art is however is free from such constraints, and therefore this permits art, to a certain degree, to proclaim unique sovereignty over an exhibition space. Let’s also imagine that both the artist and the audience come to possess a sense of identity through the exhibition as a device. Art simply attempts to explore how the seen can function as an entry point to the unseen. It attempts to use this logic, or even display the logic itself, often resulting in hypothetical structures or anatomical charts, neither of which can be seen to be a neat fit.
One way of approaching an exhibition space is to think of it as a blank expanse that one may encounter when relieved of one’s social status or when re-examining its founding principles. Imagine a clean new notebook in which to write, an empty calendar just after quitting a job. Fundamentally, the gallery is just an empty space, with many empty spaces left behind after an exhibition is over. It does not present an immersive pathway of escape like a film or a video game, a vacation abroad, or a never-ending revolution. Design exhibitions at times express their intention to devise an exhibition space as densely worked as communications media, yet even this cannot obstruct the willpower of its participants to move freely, unrestricted by the objective of the exhibition. An exhibition is a strange brand of magic, as it is only activated once the onlooker willingly enters its enclaves. The devices behind the stage are visible, creating an illusion that all the magician’s tricks are to be revealed. Yet, faced with sudden emptiness, one cannot help but be caught by surprise.
Institutional art spaces tend to reify this phenomenon. This is further heightened if the exhibited work is sold as an exclusive work of art. If art exhibitions attract people with their riddle-like absences or emptiness, rather than the objects themselves, such voids are often intricately planned out in advance in the exhibition space before they are considered to be an exhibition effect or asset. The now classical white cube exhibition space creates, in its form, a dense and elevated void. For example, the Barakat Contemporary in Samcheongdong is a place in which a void has been dramatically choreographed. Once pushing past the heavily set iron doors, as if feeling the atmospheric pressure shift from the outside, a hexagonal space emerges. While it is possible to get an overview of all the spaces when standing at the entrance, not all of its parts are visible, tempting the audience to naturally circulate within the indoor spaces, confirming the hidden crevices behind its walls and beyond the stairways, then returning to take in the space, in a series of consecutive movements. Within this mobile line of sight, the exhibition concludes, a hexagonal self-completing destination.
Nevertheless, exhibitions are not always established as such transparent, self-fulfilling destinations. The unique empty spaces of an exhibition are more often related to insignificant or dead space. The act of transforming otherwise unused spaces into exhibition spaces has long been established convention in post-industrial cities. Indeterminate expanses oscillate between death and regeneration. Such reverberations are not limited to the exhibition halls of the old city centre, exposing their speckled concrete and semi-demolished finishes. All exhibition artefacts rearranged within an expanse, displaced from their original habitat, take on a certain degree of risk. Let’s say that one decides to fall into this void. The void is a liminal space for a transformation unknown, a turbulent surface that reflects a defiantly assertive outside world. Walking across such a space inevitably generates a sense of nausea, yet there are times when it feels less hypothetical than what we think of as our reality. This is because we are not always in the process of journeying towards a given destination, nor do the rhythms of our lives come together when we arrive at said destination. In the instant that we pause, we question of whether we took a wrong path or if we had mistaken where we were in the first place arises. The moment one starts to wonder, ‘what can I see here?’, one finds themselves at the threshold of an exhibition.
Shindoh Art Space. Exhibition view of ‘Chung Heeseung: COPIER’ (2020) / Image courtesy of Shindoh Art Space
Yoon Wonhwa
Yoon Wonhwa is an independent researcher, art writer, and translator based in Seoul. She is the author of Picture, Window, Mirror: Photographs Seen in the Exhibition Space and On the Thousand and Second Night: Visual Arts in Seoul in the 2010s. She co-curated ‘Human Scale’ at the Ilmin Museum of Art and co-produced Soft Places for the Seoul Mediacity Biennale 2018.
