MMCA HYUNDAI MOTOR SERIES is the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea’s 10-year long project inaugurated in 2014 in collaboration with Hyundai Motor Company to support solo exhibitions of distinguished Korean artists. By providing a pivotal opportunity as commissioning large-scale new works to the artists with distinctive practices, the series instills invigorating possibilities into the field of contemporary Korean art. Ahn Kyuchul, the invited artist of 2015 series, has been relentlessly seeking alternative prospects of contemporary art through profound examination on life and art since the mid-1980s.
The title of this exhibit, Invisible Land of Love, is cited from the title of a poem by the poet Mah Chonggi(b. 1939) in order to unearth and to contemplate meanings of things being absent in ‘here and now’. Ahn routes us to a journey to the ‘land of love’ by revealing ‘invisible’ thoughts that were hidden behind overflowing images and sensory stimulation around us and calling out the names of things we have lost.
As an extensive effort to broaden boundaries among literature, architecture, music, video, performance, and publishing, eight of Ahn’s new works presented at this exhibition incorporate diverse genres. Nine Goldfish, Time of Plants II, and The Back Side of Objects are conceptual works searching for a clue to provoke careful deliberation from everyday objects. The Pianist and the Tuner expands field of visual art to music and sound, while 64 Rooms and Room of Silence to architecture and experience of physical senses. 1,000 Scribes engaging a thousand participants to transcribe literature works and Wall of Memories comprised of index cards constituting a colossal wall are participatory projects realized by the general public throughout the exhibition period.
As Ahn comments that “this project will be full of blanks ought to be filled by the viewers.” it challenges them to return a response to the artist’s questions. This exhibition is not a complete work, but rather an open process transformed over viewer participation. In the contradictory act of creating an ‘arena’ by ‘vacating the exhibition hall’, viewers become active force not passive spectators establishing an ‘invisible’ symbol of bond and community.
