“Collection Variable” Installation view ©MMCA
National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea presents “Collection Variable”, on view through July 21 at Seoul branch. “Collection Variable” is an exhibition of the MMCA’s permanent collection, focusing on contemporary works that present diverse conditions and variable characteristics of art with intangible states and materials in immaterial forms.
This exhibition combines the sometimes elusive and variable nature of contemporary art with the special conditions of a permanent museum collection. In so doing, it presents the stories behind the artworks that remain in the museum after leaving the hands of their creators. The exhibition presents around twenty works under three themes: Relationships Variable, Dimensions Variable, and Places Variable. It explores the “variable” nature of artworks that are constantly changing and reinterpreted, such as artworks made of immaterial materials including scent, sound, memory, and relationships; artworks created through a combination of science, technology, and collaboration; and artworks created at different times and in different places that are recreated in new places and contexts.
Alongside the works from MMCA’s permanent collection, the exhibition also features a number of oral documentation, interviews, installation manuals, and other materials that are not usually accessible to the public. In this sense, this exhibition proposes to explore and answer questions that are often challenging in the appreciation of contemporary art: what are the elements of contemporary art that we cannot see with our own eyes; what should we look for in works that are disappearing; or what are the questions that we do not need to ask?
After seeing the exhibition, viewers will be reminded of the smell of incense in OH Inhwan’s work where the incense powder turns to ash and disappears; the repeating sound from KIM Sora’s work that haunts their ears; the lingering video image of The More, The Better; and the memories of museums they have visited in the past through PARK Chankyong’s Gallery 5. It is hoped that the experience will remain a lasting, intangible sensation and memory, inviting viewers to recall it as a final component of their appreciation of the artworks in the exhibition. The museum and its permanent collection will endure for many years to come.
The artworks in its permanent collection will either be lost in the global catastrophes and environmental changes that have become part of our daily lives with the climate crisis or will be expanded by new and variable qualities, scopes, and meanings of art. Therefore, the museum is a place to consider the questions that led to the creation of contemporary artworks, why these works have taken the form they have, and how they should be transmitted to the next generation and preserved in new creative environments. It is hoped that this exhibition will explore these questions with visitors to the museum and provide a new experience of art appreciation.
