Herzog & de Meuron: Exploring SongEun Art Space

To make an exhibition about architecture is, and remains, difficult because architecture functions in its entirety and can be fully experienced only on the site itself. We have been searching for methods to offer visitors their own way of engaging with it ever since our first exhibition, Architektur Denkform, at the Architekturmuseum in Basel in 1988.

Here in Seoul, it is crucial to us – as the exhibition title Exploring SongEun Art Space expresses – that the architectural spaces in which we present something are opened to the public for the first time. The exhibition display follows the careful sequence of spaces and offers a stroll through indoor and outdoor areas, the galleries above and below ground. In anticipation of future possibilities, this inaugural exploration allows us to test the potential of hosting various artistic media in the building, from traditional hangings with paintings and photographs to newer and alternative formats such as video, projections, augmented reality, and even smell.

Our particular interest in video and related filmic forms is part of a continuing debate about questions of perception, representation, and realities of architecture: “Video images are interesting because they relate to real life. As in photography, their pictorial reality expresses things and acts that look real, so suddenly we found ourselves with a tool that would allow us to express our ideas on architecture in a contemporary form even without a concrete commission – and much more successfully than by using classical means of representation like models, plans, and drawings.” [1]

We deliberately concentrate on immaterial themes and thought constructs to which we have long been committed, consistently revisiting them and acquiring new insights. Hence, we also present selected works from our past with a specific focus on the field of art: many films, conversations, and videos with artists, including our extended collaborations with Rémy Zaugg and Thomas Ruff. [HdM]

[1] Jacques Herzog in conversation with Jeff Wall, moderated by Philip Ursprung (Basel, November 2003), in: Pictures of Architecture. Architecture of Pictures. A Conversation between Jacques Herzog and Jeff Wall. Edited by: Cristina Bechtler. Vienna / New York, Springer, 2004, pp. 11-69, p. 13.