Borderline Museum Architecture: Unfamiliar Tension and Healing

“Even a brick wants to be something.”

“Even a brick wants to be something.” This is a quote of the U.S. architect Louis Kahn (1901-1974). Today’s discourse on contemporary architecture, particularly on museum architecture, includes diverse perspectives and creative expectations that encompass the category of ‘non-architecture’, denoting architecture that is not architecture.
Upon climbing up the gently rolling hills of the village and entering the Youngwol (‘young moon’) Y Park site centered on Youngwol Art Museum, a unique architectural landscape unfolds itself. The exceptionality of the entrance, starting with the unfamiliarity that contrasts with that of Cheongheoru Pavilion, reveals a whole new form of space installation that is almost unheard of in conventional museum architecture. The visitor’s route is as follows: Entrance > Lobby Building > Pine Pantheon (also known as ‘Jupiter’) > Exhibition Hall, Beer Museum > Red Pavilion > Sulsaem (‘Liquor Fountain’) Museum > Exit.
Youngwol Y Park is located in Jucheon-myeon, Yeongwol-gun. This region was associated with traditional liquor to the point of having been called ‘Jucheon (‘liquor fountain’) Prefecture’ since Goryeo Dynasty. Cheongheoru Pavilion and Bingheoru Pavilion face each other across Jucheon River. Originally renowned for quality beef, this area was developed as a culinary hotspot with Sulsaem taverns serving up beef dishes. Exploring this backdrop, it was designated as a themed complex including the establishment of ‘Sulsaem Museum’ in 2016. However, the area eventually underwent another renewal project. The structures newly opened in June 2019 are designed by Park Shin Jung, director of the Art Museum in Hassla Art World, Gangneung and sculptor and professor CHOI OK YEUNG. The project radically transformed the landscape of the park by remodeling seven to eight buildings that were constructed in 2016, in addition to full-scale redesigning and installation processes.

‘Looking up to the Sky’ and Dialogues

The architectural concept of the park can be summarized as ‘仰天’, which means ‘looking up to the sky’. This naturally overlaps with the worldview of sculptor CHOI OK YEUNG. In addition to the dynamic space created through rhythmic undulation and lines of movement that naturally present the surrounding landscape, the connecting structure built using red steel pipe scaffolds creates striking visual harmony with the simple natural topography in the vicinity. The overarching framework of the design begins with the static commonality formed by seven taverns and progresses towards the ideal space of the museum. The transformation into a space, where people can take a stroll, look up to the sky and communicate, constitutes the keyword of the overall design.

The Pine Pantheon, the first stop for visitors, is a massive circular tube structure measuring 15 meters in height and 12 meters in diameter, that exudes an intense scent of pine upon entering. It was made of more than 200 tons of pine wood that are widely available in Gangwon Province, by stacking layers of pine timbers with steel support beams. The timbers are stacked diagonally to resemble a comb-pattern and offer a view of the sky at the top through a circular hole. This unusual space, where one can lie down and look up to the universe, is surrounded by a powerful energy that emanates from the pine wood, which embodies the essence of Gangwon Province.

The first attempt at creating a space where fragments of light seep through a structure of woven pine wood was made at the Art Museum in Hassla Art World, Gangneung, followed by Youngwol Art Museum in Yeongwol. The two attempts, however, have distinctive differences. While the Hassla space retains the irregular form of ‘tunnel structure’ made of pine wood, its Youngwol counterpart makes visitors feel as if they were inside a huge, round pine basket. Though it is reminiscent of the Roman Pantheon, which symbolizes the mother’s embrace and Roman tolerance, or a stupa, an ancient form of religious shrine found in India, it retains its own inimitable aspect. The aggregation of enormous wooden masses, the intense energy of pine wood arranged in diagonal and parallel lines, each and every piece of wood composes an aggregation of different living beings from different sources, which combine to allow free interaction and elevated thought.

The steel pipe scaffold at the entrance of the Red Pavilion shows the dynamism and freedom of meeting and parting. The Red Pavilion encompasses the existing monotonous restaurant buildings and connects the buildings to each other and to nature. It is both a pavilion and an exhibition space, while also serving as a pathway. The entire structure, consisting of numerous red steel pipes, makes no distinction between inside and outside, and the empty spaces in between create a feeling akin to walking in the air. The entire area is dotted with installation art and peculiar tunnel pathways, which evoke a strange sense of tension upon walking through these lengthy passages.

Inside, Youngwol Museum, Sulsaem Museum, Beer Museum and others constitute a mini museum complex, amidst displays introducing the works of various artists in addition to CHOI OK YEUNG, such as Choi Jae-eun and Lee Eun-young.

A Novel Attempt: Sculptures+Architecture

In Yeongwol, which is otherwise known as the village of museums, there are 23 museums including nine public exhibition halls. More than 1,100 museum halls in total are registered, and various museums have been established for each municipality with the aim to enhance cultural enjoyment and economic vitality. However, despite its quantitative expansion, it has been undeniably difficult to achieve immeasurable goals such as ensuring high-quality museums and cultural enjoyment in the local community. In this situation, the transformation and new start of ‘Youngwol Y Park’ is meaningful in many respects, not only for Yeongwol-gun but also nationwide. Most importantly, the park presents a novel form of museum architecture that reflects sculptors’ interpretation of space and their oeuvres in addition to the practicality of established architectural practices. It freely crosses the boundaries of architecture and plastic arts, presenting significant implications for the numerous architectural methods centered on practical use. It is also meaningful in that reclaimed materials were used for renovation and creating artworks, such as stones removed from stone walls near the entrance to Cheongheoru Pavilion, and stones and stainless steel salvaged from old buildings. Creative spaces that make full use of reclaimed materials are hidden all around the park, which embraces the aforementioned sentiment, “Even a brick wants to be something.”
Youngwol Y Park, which starts at the graceful Cheongheoru Pavilion, is a meaningful project that built a mini museum complex out of town of beef and taverns, now presenting ideas that break with convention, unfamiliar thrills and emotional healing. The deep insight and tolerance that Yeongwol-gun showed toward unconventional approaches was another significant factor in the remodeling process. However, the value of a museum depends on how it operates rather than how it was established. It is exciting to anticipate how the park will break with convention again in attracting visitors to this haven of novelty, creativity, and emotional healing, and continuing to provide great content as a foothold of local culture.  

ART CRITIC

Choi Byung-sik

Yeongwol: The Land of CHOI OK YEUNG, A Director of Wood and Dramatic Landscapes

There was once a sculptor. In his workshop, located within a closed school at the foot of a mountain in Wangsan, Gangwon Province, his works were carelessly scattered around like cow dung on a field. As many others did, I also referred to him as ‘a cow-dung artist’. This memory dates back to more than 30 years ago. The workshop in this intense, nostalgic memory was swept away without any trace in the landslides and downpour caused by Typhoon Rusa in 1994.
Twenty years from my first encounter at CHOI OK YEUNG’s workshop in Wangsan, I rediscovered his traces at the art museum in Hassla (‘hassla’ means ‘to light up’ in Goguryeo language) Art World. Even after the school had closed, CHOI had held on to his work using cow-dung and wood, eventually opening a sculpture park called Hassla on a site spanning 248 m2 in Gangneung in 2003.

CHOI’s workshop, lined with colossal artworks, was both unique and impressive. Large installations made of timbers measuring seven to eight meters long stood proudly as if they were monuments. In addition, indoor installations including the front desk and beds resembling uteri marked the boundary of his works. As such, the vast space overlooking the sea at Hassla in Gangneung became his second home on earth. Now, the land is CHOI’s canvas and he has become a senior stage director who builds stages from wood and soil. What is the reason he rushed out into the land?
CHOI believed that, while it is a beautiful thing for his works to be bought and housed by someone one day, it was always disheartening that they will be monopolized by an individual. He became engrossed in the idea that art should be shared with many people. In this vein, what first attracted his artistic inspiration and passion was an intense urge to erect something on the land.

In part, CHOI intentionally created large-scale works or installation art with the ulterior motive of preventing individuals from monopolizing his works. Like most land artists including Robert Smithson (1938-1973), the founder of land art, CHOI OK YEUNG also wished to keep their mind and spirit on nature for as long as possible. Hassla became the sanctuary of all artworks where they were kept in one place within full view of the mountains and the sea. The installation works at Hassla are diverse in theme and intriguing in terms of the materials used, in addition to their composition and the shape of the route that they are on. CHOI’s shining ideas, such as adopting the topography or space of the land such as steel and rocks to create artworks such as an enormous sundial, allow at least a glimpse at the direction in his unfathomable pursuit of land art.
This reveals the greater picture of Prof. CHOI’s working style. He orchestrates his work process like a surveyor who interprets the land on site as an artwork with a single boundary and arranges objects in harmony with the given space.

CHOI OK YEUNG has continued his talent donation activities in the plains region of Cambodia since 2014. These experiences of land art are fully conveyed in the book Story of Neighborhood Museums, which includes autobiographical essays on his admiration and impressions toward nature and other real-life experiences.
People ask him questions such as, “What can be made by this man who smells of wood out of rough wood and cow dung…?”

CHOI, however, sublimated all these questions through massive and flawless artworks under a coherent theme of reverence for nature. To this end, he successfully created land art as a foundation for people who utilize space while minimizing the destruction of nature at Hassla Art World. Now, he has moved his stage to Yeongwol.
The recent work of CHOI OK YEUNG in the pursuit of ‘art on the road’ is centered on Yeongwol. Ranging from Gangneung through Cambodia to Mongol, his land art pilgrimage is making a stop in Yeongwol at present. CHOI once described the land as “a place of beauty that pursues a pure form of plasticity that accentuates simple and primordial power”. Now, Sulsaem in Yeongwol has become such a haven of beauty.

“The land (nature) is the eternal matrix of the life and death of all things and a giant womb where they grow. Today, I tread on the land once again. This old, quiet path or a path of thorns is a path that countless artists have walked before me, and all of these paths constitute the greatest work of land art that human beings have created physically or spiritually.” This is the clearest statement he has ever made on why he became a land artist. With this fierce determination, he took part in Yeongwol as a stage director. His job as a stage director was to cut trees and re-erect them elsewhere, or sometimes to erect metal instead of trees to make paths.
CHOI completed this art project of an immense scale over thousands of square meters, incorporating the elements of things that can be seen while walking, things that can be viewed from above, and things that can be felt while walking. In this regard, his unconventional land art, which utilized steel poles painted in red, faithfully embodied the purpose of achieving harmony with nature by using the exhibition space of his installation works as it was originally.

Since land artists typically use natural sites, the boundaries between works of land art and their surroundings are not clear. However, CHOI’s artworks merge with the components of a space in nature, thereby presenting special experiences of a specific place in ways that can be charming or dignified. This is a way of expressing the contemplation of space in a broader way, which presents impressive views of places in novel forms.
It has been almost 40 years since CHOI began working on wood and land. After his exhibition of cow-dung sculptures at the POSCO Gallery made tremendous waves in 1987, he was invited to hold an exhibition at the Pepper’s Gallery in Tokyo, Japan. Since then, his land art has passed a certain turning point where he sought all over the world to find his own place, as seen in his 2015 land art project in Cambodia. Now, he awaits us at Sulsaem in Yeongwol, where he asks us to question and confirm the existence of humanity and ourselves through his wooden castle, like the work of Christo and Jeanne-Claude. The dramatic and paradisiac scale and vista of his creation in the Red Village of Sulsaem, Yeongwol is now home to the culmination of CHOI OK YEUNG’s pilgrimage of wood and steel.

CHOI believed that the intentions and processes of artworks constitute art in themselves, contrary to the perspective whereby the success and failure of art is judged by capital. Today, his land art is flowering in tremendous splendor across Yeongwol, like a festival in the name of CHOI OK YEUNG, who has been dreaming of nature for so long.

ART CRITIC

Kim Jong Geun

SPACE DESIGN SKETCHES

Copyright © Choi Ok Yeung