Seoul Box
Mihn Hyun-jun and mp_art architects · 2013
Go down the main stairs from the lobby and you enter a great cube of space, about seventeen metres high, with white walls, a glass roof and balconies looking in from the galleries around it. This is Seoul Box, the largest single room in the museum and the space that defines its identity. It is not a gallery in the usual sense but a void, designed to hold one work at a time, and every few months a new artist is invited to fill it.
The photograph here shows one of the first installations, bit.fall by the German artist Julius Popp, in which hundreds of computer controlled nozzles released curtains of water that formed words for a fraction of a second before they fell into a pool. The words were drawn from live news feeds, so visitors watched the day's headlines drip past. It set the tone for what the space does best: works that use height, light, sound or motion in ways an ordinary gallery cannot. Later projects have included suspended sculptures, forests of fabric, sound works and stages for performance. Look up at the balconies, which turn the room into a theatre where other visitors become part of the work.
The museum in Gwacheon has its own great central space around Nam June Paik's video tower, and Seoul Box is its younger sibling. If you have only an hour, come here first. Whatever is installed will be the work the museum most wants you to see, and the room itself, empty or full, is the clearest expression of the building's architecture.
Did You Know? In Julius Popp's bit.fall, the first installation shown here, the falling water spelled out words pulled in real time from internet news feeds.
Unlock the Full Guide
Read every room and listen to every work in all museums with premium.