[Gallery Walk] Turning the Art Museum into a Laboratory Instead of an Exhibition Hall

Koreana Art Museum c-lab 9.0 "Art Museum/Laboratory"

Challenging the "Rules of the Museum" Through Language, Rhythm, and Narrative

"Why Do Art Museums Experiment?"

c-lab_Art Museum Laboratory_Poster Photo Koreana Art Museum

This question is not a declaration, but rather a device that draws the audience directly into the heart of the work. Koreana Art Museum’s c-lab 9.0 “Art Museum/Laboratory” reframes the museum, not as a repository of outcomes, but as a laboratory where failure and mutation are permitted. Rather than explaining this framework, the exhibition juxtaposes three distinct experiments, allowing visitors to experience them firsthand.

Hyunseok Kim’s “CODA” deals with language—specifically, questioning what collapses when language ceases to be the exclusive domain of humans. Set in an imagined future where AGI manages and controls language, the piece invites the audience to engage, as if tracing the remnants of “natural language.” Speech is instantly converted into data, and meaning erodes through the processes of translation and substitution. True to its title, this work approaches a coda, or conclusion. It prompts us to envision the end of language, while exposing just how much our habitual systems of thought depend on technological environments.

Kwanghui Ahn’s “BE KIND, REWIND, DOUBLE BIND” shakes up the museum through rhythm. Here, hip-hop and rap function not as genres, but as modes of critique. By foregrounding the conditions of Korean art—consuming translated versions of Western art history and Black culture—the work confronts the uncomfortable terms “fake” and “rootless” head-on. When the most streetwise rhythm collides with the most institutional of spaces, the languages and forms that have sustained the museum begin to grate. This work does not resolve that discomfort; instead, it compels the audience to endure it.

Performance of Charge Amount 'Novel'. Photo by Coriana Art Museum

Jiryang Cha’s performance “Novel” transforms the museum into a stage for storytelling. In a distant future where resources are depleted, the audience, as “person and soul,” wanders through an empty museum, guided by sound, image, and spatiotemporal devices. The performance unfolds without a fixed stage and subtly shifts according to audience participation. Here, the museum becomes not a place of preservation, but a page where what has vanished and what is yet unnamed briefly reside.

“Art Museum/Laboratory” is not a friendly exhibition. Instead of offering explanations, it throws audiences into situations and breaks down the safe zone of appreciation, making the audience part of the experiment. It asks not what the museum can show, but what it can test. And without ever fully answering that question, the exhibition remains open to the next experiment. The exhibition runs through March 14.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.