2024 SeMA-Project A: Tactile Space, Tactile Rhythm
SeMA-Project A explores the spaces of the Art Archives, Seoul Museum of Art, which consists of various buildings and sites. Through the SeMA’s collection and commissioned installations corresponding to each space, visitors are invited to explore the rooftop garden of the Collaborating Space as well as the Exchanging Space and the Learning Space.
Partly renewed, 2024 SeMA-Project A focuses on the tactile spaces and sensations generated by the archive, aiming to investigate the tactile empathy produced by visual artworks in connection with it. Unlike artworks primarily meant for visual appreciation, engaging with records that can be handled directly or flipped through the pages transcends mere acquisition of linguistic or visual information, involving sensory dimensions. Furthermore, imagining the visual and tactile aspects of the moment when records were created, such as someone’s writing or drawing, allows for a deeper engagement with the past.
For the 2024 exhibition, a new installation at the Exchanging Space by artist Song Sanghee Postcards captures the act of alternatingly displaying postcards collected by the artist from various cities alongside those in virtual narratives. Scenes of hands touching and flipping through the postcards in the video add a tactile sense, alluding to the fact that the medium of postcards, containing personal stories, passes through the hands of others in the process of communication. This is connected to the artist's fictional narrative―such as the story of avian flu spreading through contact with birds and postcards―reminding us that even in today when the world is saturated with the internet and virtual connections, we are still physically connected and in contact with each other.
In the Learning Space, alongside Postcards in the Exchanging Space, there are Stairs Construction-Podium 1 by Gimhongsok and The Balloons by Hwang Haesun, which pay attention to the daily object and experience. At first glance, Stairs Construction-Podium 1 appears to be a stack of paper boxes but is actually a bronze casting work that faithfully reproduces the texture of paper boxes. By crafting ordinary paper boxes―typically used for packaging―with traditional sculptural material like bronze, the piece questions whether such everyday objects can become materials worth noting, akin to a podium, in contemporary art. On the other hand, The Balloons depicts the experience of holding a bundle of balloons and anticipating something, empathetically capturing the feeling of anticipation through sculpture-drawing, synesthetically portraying the volume of the inflated balloons.
On the 2nd floor of the rooftop garden of the Collaborating Space, Kim Chaelin's Sculpture of Memory, a commissioned installation for the SeMA-project A, offers a fresh perspective on the dimension of memory connected by the sensory perception of touch. The traces of hands left on the surface of the artwork, the objects imbued with memories, or the shapes of past fragments, archive the artist's memories. As we touch and examine them, we recall bodily memories we had not previously perceived, connecting to new tactile experiences. On the 3rd floor, Chung Soyoung’s Sailor and Hong Myung Seop's De-veloping-Silhouette Casting face each other. Sailor, the result of the artist directly touching, bending and leaning against the panel, while feeling its elasticity, and De-veloping-Silhouette Casting which cuts silhouettes literally corresponding to scissor’s function to cut out somethings, add a tactile and fluid rhythm to the conventional methods of sculpting. On the 4th floor, Hong Seok Ho's An iron plate fold and Kim Inkyum’s Emptiness occupy the space, countering the weighty mass of sculptures. An iron plate fold extends folded steel plates outward into the surrounding space, intervening in the space where the sculpture is located. Meanwhile, Emptiness creates a sculpture by emptying the center, drawing the surrounding space into the sculpture, thereby creating a space of contact with the surroundings.
The architecture of the Art Archives, Seoul Museum of Art spans multiple sites, extending encounters with the surrounding environment. In response to this, the 2024 SeMA Project A aims to rejuvenate the senses of touch and memory in our daily lives, which have been saturated with non-face-to-face interactions such as video calls and social media. To experience the 2024 SeMA Project A, stroll through the spaces of the SeMA AA, feeling the texture of the ground and the warmth of the sunlight anew and experiencing a variety of sensations and memories.
Photo: Lee Seung Yul
