iSeoul Museum of ArtSeosomun-dong, Jung-gu
SeMA Public Space Project: Dance of Eternal Polarities
A large-scale crocheted installation by Ernesto Neto, filled with guava and tea-tree leaves, transforming the museum's lobby and public spaces with sensory forms drawn from Brazil's Neo-Concrete movement.
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Walk into the Seosomun lobby and look up. Brown and pink tubes of crocheted cotton hang from the ceiling and wind across the lobby and along the corridor, stuffed with guava leaves and leaves from Korean tea gardens, which add a faint scent of tea.
Ernesto Neto, the Brazilian sculptor, had the structure crocheted in Brazil and filled with the Korean leaves for this building: brown stands for tree trunks and night, pink for flowers and day. It is one work, commissioned by SeMA. The spiral tubes are elastic, and the museum says they move with the small vibrations and breath of people passing, while light from the skylight changes them through the day. SeMA says the work is only complete with your participation, and helpfully supplies the hashtag: #netoinseoul.
It's free and on the 1st floor, so it pairs with whatever you came to see upstairs. Fridays run to 21:00, from November weekends close at 18:00, and it comes down on 31 December.
Look for
The tea-leaf filling
Look closely at the open crochet: the tubes are packed with dried guava leaves and Camellia sinensis tea leaves from Korean tea gardens, and they give the lobby a faint tea scent.
Brown and pink
The two colours of industrial cotton alternate along the work, brown for tree trunks and night, pink for flowers and day.
The tubes under the skylight
Follow the elastic spiral tubes from the lobby into the corridor, where daylight from the skylight shifts how they look over the day.
Good for
- An Hour Or Less
- Cheap Culture
- Evening Visits
Skip if
You want a full exhibition: this is a single installation hung in the lobby.
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Image credits
8
- SeMA Public Space Project: Dance of Eternal PolaritiesCourtesy of Seoul Museum of Art
- Taehwagwan: A Space Weaving Together TimeCourtesy of Seoul Museum of History
- Ilgu Iryuk, Muhan Iryuk: 100 Years of Hangul DayCourtesy of National Museum of Korean Contemporary History
- Seoul Museum of Artgypsycrystal, CC BY 2.0
- MMCA DeoksugungKimhs5400 (블루시티), via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Seoul Museum of HistoryJjw / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- National Museum of Korean Contemporary HistoryTrace84 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- National Palace Museum of KoreaJinho Jung, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0