00 / The Platform for Living Discourses
Under the concept of ecology, a dozen works are discussing respective stories. The voices of artists are uttered in the language of sensation, trying to communicate with audiences. The reflective spheres throughout the room objectify all the works and audiences by collecting them on the balls’ sleek surface. It makes the audiences aware that they are an integral part of the ecosystem and the subject of the expression, just like the artists. This exhibition, at which audiences and works voice collectively, is the platform for ecological discourses.
01 / The Physics of Meaning
The works are not placed in separate rooms but scattered throughout a single open space, having proper distances between each other. The exhibition designer did not use solid walls separating a work from others. The things that the designer used are diverse-sized reflective spheres. These balls occupy the room like the stones on the Baduk(Go) board, making scale-varying spaces and flows that are not physically divided. At the same time, the balls induce meta-perspective from audiences by objectifying works and audiences themselves because the balls reflect all the things in the room on their surfaces and allow individuals to see them. Ironically, the air-filled balls with the lowest mass in the room have the heaviest semantic weight, forming the multi-dimensional topography of the gallery.
02 / The Subjectification of Audiences
Each work in the gallery displays the artists’ unique viewpoint on ecology. Each artwork in the gallery represents the artists’ perspective on ecology. However, it is not the unique status as an artist that makes them express their opinions, but the being as an ordinary person who can have their perspective and say it. Artworks and exhibitions only play a role that stimulates us sensually to face the issues without hesitation and induces enjoyable dialogues. Through the sensual language, <Time of the Earth> reveals that both the artist and you, the audience, are the speakers on ecology.
03 / The Way Exhibition Design Shows Ecology
Conventionally, when an exhibition treats the message about the environment or ecology, exhibition designers often institute “eco-friendly” materials into the galley or minimize physical construction to enhance the message. Even though the methods are sometimes considered useful solutions, they contain an inborn limitation in adhering to the dichotomous view of the ecosystem as an object and the human being as an utilizer. Therefore, the real value of <Time of the Earth> is that going beyond the limitation, it contemplates and exhibits the view of the human being as a part of the ecosystem.
Photo & Writing / Seuhyun Oh
