Im Sungoo, Installation view of 《Folding Acts》 ⓒ Coreana Museum of Art
Coreana Museum of Art presents a special exhibition 《Folding Acts》, originating from the inquiry
of ‘Museum as Laboratory,’ the thematic focus of the museum’s multidisciplinary
arts program, *c-lab 9.0, on view through May 30.
Today, museums have expanded beyond spaces centered on painting
and sculpture into complex platforms that encompass diverse forms such as
performance, installation, video, archives, and research-based practices.
Within this shift, “performativity” has emerged as a key concept for
understanding contemporary art, yet it is still often perceived as being
limited to performance or the performing arts.
《Folding Acts》 moves beyond this limitation
by reinterpreting performativity not as a specific genre, but as a mode through
which art operates. Performativity can be understood as the force through which
language and action produce reality, as well as the process by which meaning
and relationships are formed through repetition and the accumulation of time.
Chung Heemin, Installation view of 《Folding Acts》 ⓒ Coreana Museum of Art
This exhibition begins from the perspective of viewing the body
not as an object of representation, but as a subject of thought and a site of
experimentation. Drawing and painting emerge as traces accumulated through
repeated bodily actions, while installation functions as a performative device
that engages the viewer’s senses and movement.
Performance, along with its records in the form of scores and
archives, is presented as an open structure that can be reactivated across
different times and places. In this way, diverse media are not divided into
discrete genres, but unfold through their intersections as varied modes in
which embodied thinking operates.
Lee Yunjung, Installation view of 《Folding Acts》 ⓒ Coreana Museum of Art
《Folding Acts》 approaches “performativity” as
an operative mode through which meaning is constructed via repeated actions,
placing emphasis on process rather than outcome.
Going beyond the notion of an exhibition to be merely viewed, it
reconfigures the museum as a “site of experimentation” where sensation and
action actively unfold, inviting viewers to experience how the body generates
new meanings and relationships within an institutional space.
Participating Artists: Lee Yunjung, Im
Sungoo, Chung Heemin
