“To approach this new chapter differently, instead of viewing it as a carte blanche, we embraced the challenge of considering the many existing peripheral elements while exploring the centre as a void,” begins Minsuk Cho: this year’s chosen designer of the annual Serpentine Pavilion. With a background in hospitality, commercial and visual art projects across South Korea, Mass Studio’s founder brings a layered understanding of human interaction with one’s environment to this year’s installation.
Drawing inspiration from ‘mandags,’ or the small courtyards found at the centre of historic Korean houses, Cho reconsiders the architecture of Hyde Park’s South Pavilion by displacing the central focal point of previous installations. Positioning five ‘island’ structures he calls the ‘Archipelagic Void’ amid Hyde Park, visitors are invited to take their own journey through the multi-sensory archipelago, notably free of signage or prescribed path dictating one’s visit.
Minsuk Cho, this year’s chosen architect
One’s eyes, ears, taste, smell and touch are invited to engage with sensory experiences from The Gallery’s sound installation by musician and composer Jang Young-Gyu. Or possibly through the visual journey through literature curated onsite by artist Heman Chon and archivist Renee Haal’s Library of Unread Books?
As a fly on the wall, a father’s cycling club is spotted refueling at The Tea House, while toddlers entertain themselves at The Play Tower. Spending the morning immersed in this so called ‘void,’ Mass Studio strikes a cord in reminding us through our position on each ‘mangag’ that art, in varying shape and form, is for everyone.
Since Zaha Hadid’s inauguration of the annual Pavilion opening each spring back in 2000, a knowhow to get the city up and reconnected with the great outdoors is reinvigorated by an invitation to find your own oasis among an artist’s creative shelter.
All photos courtesy of The Serpentine.
