SeMA Omnibus Fantasia of the Archives
“A new imaginative space... arises from the black and white surface of printed signs, from the closed and dusty volume that opens with a flight of forgotten words.” Michel Foucault, “Fantasia of the Library,” 1967*
Held at the main branch and three branches of the Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA), SeMA Omnibus is a series of exhibitions centered on the SeMA collection to examine the institution’s 2024 agenda of ‘connection’ from various angles. The exhibition Fantasia of the Archives, presented by Art Archives SeMA, aims to provide a channel to conjure up the artists’ past works and envisage a new path, inviting audiences to explore a broader scope of the SeMA collection by excavating archives and artworks. The artists’ notes containing behind-the-scenes stories, references they referred to, photographs they tested, drawings and maquettes they used for pre-production allow us to imagine how much time and effort they put into the creative process. The archive is a record from the past, but it remains present in that the artists’ endless ideas physically appear in the work, and it will continue to inspire artistic and creative minds towards the future. This chronological concept of the archive, traversing past, present, and future time, is reminiscent of the ‘fantasia’ Michel Foucault once experienced in the book-filled library. Just as Foucault considered the library as a new space of wonders and as a phenomenon of blossoming imagination, this exhibition proposes the Art Archives as a space of artistic imagination.
Fantasia of the Archives summons six artists from the SeMA collection, including KWAK Namsin, SON Kwang-Ju, YOON Kalim, LEE Kyojun, IM Sunyi, and CHUN Kook-kwang. It unfolds the record of the past, the voice of the present, and the imagination that lies in the future. Across various media such as painting, video, photography, and sculpture, the artists project their unique worldviews into their works that sit on the boundaries and interstices of the past and present, the real and the illusory, abstraction and figuration. Here, the archive will lead audiences to a creative universe of each artist. The exhibition examines the original context of the works by connecting the gaze and time of the artists with those of the audiences. Fantasia of the Archives does not attempt to re-contextualize the collection. Instead, it aims to connect each artwork with its original context. Reading the archive in conjunction with the SeMA collection will offer a chance to re-explore the artistic context and expand its meaning to a new realm.
*Foucault, Michel, “Fantasia of the Library,” 1967, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, edited by Donald F. Bouchard, Cornell University Press, 1980, p. 90.
