Garden

A year ago National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul opened its doors for the first time with the objective to be perceived as an urban cultural center that welcomes visitors with warm, open arms. Garden is conceived and presented to celebrate the fact that MMCA Seoul has accomplished one of its missions to become a utopian garden for the general public on the first anniversary of its birth.

A space for “Pause” awaits viewers at the very point where the rampages of brilliant and unsettling colors and disquieting emotions have stopped. Its dense black-and-white forest under a magnificent waterfall helps one to slow down his or her hurried mind and to take a deep breath of fresh air.

Upon entering a darkened dark space after taking a pause in the woods, one finds an eighteenth-century Buddhist hanging scroll made during the Joseon Dynasty and works by a twenty-first-century American video artist are conversing with each another.  

Together with the huge Buddhist painting scroll, two video and sound installations are on display: Tristan’s Ascension and Fire Woman. These works by Bill Viola were produced for Wagner’s opera created based on the Celtic legend called “Tristan and Isolde. 

These three works of art are displayed together in a single space. But the use of a sequential lighting system prevents them from being seen all at the same time. It is as if one throws a question and then disappears from a stage and the other enters it in order to give an answer. It is not just the works that engage in the dialogue. Encouraged to take part in this dialogue, viewers are forced to be faced with the questions that their inner minds ask them.