A Technique of Occupying Space

A Technique of Occupying Space

Seewon Hyun’s “Floor Plan Cabinet”

June 14–September 21, 2025

1F Beijing Inside-Out Art Museum

Ticket Price：20 yuan

Group visitors (Above 10 visitors) with reservation to visit at the appointed time.

Floor Plan Cabinet (2017), curated by Seewon Hyun at Audio Visual Pavilion (AVP), Seoul, is presented as a case study of contemporary Korean curatorial practice. Based in Seoul, Seewon Hyun is an independent curator, writer, and co-founder of AVP (2013-2019), a project space she now directs solely as AVP Lab (2020-). Floor Plan Cabinet was Hyun’s first public project in her ongoing research on the curator’s floor plan as an independent form that can be used to examine curatorial methodologies’ past, present, and future. With the idea of a floor plan as a departure point, the exhibition questioned the spatiotemporal framework of an exhibition as a temporary event. The show comprised new commissions alongside revisitations of earlier works and archives by artists Moonsick Gang, Kiljong Park, MeeNa Park & Sasa[44], and Jiyoung Yoon, some of whom also identify as designers. The works functioned as containers in various forms and scales that compacted a vast spatiotemporal scope of information.

Floor Plan Cabinet and Seewon Hyun’s engagement with the floor plan can be considered an “economical” conceptualist undertaking–what Hyun refers to in her doctoral dissertation as a “technique of occupying space.” Whether through physical reduction or imaginative expansion, efficiency operates within the financial and spatial limits of exhibition-making, shaping the artistic strategies of Hyun and her long-term collaborators. In this context, the category of design—with its focus on creative problem solving—emerges as a critical element, equal in importance to art. Efficiency, in turn, enables distant leaps and new associations across existing categories of art and history, much like a diagram does. While such economic conditions are not unique to Seoul, Hyun’s curatorial practice, along with those of her collaborators, has not been merely provisional but persistent, contributing a distinctive aesthetic to the Korean art scene.

A Technique of Occupying Space: Seewon Hyun’s Floor Plan Cabinet is visually interpreted by Moonsick Gang and is accompanied by AVP’s various archival materials.

Floor Plan Cabinet (2017)

A Technique of Occupying Space: Seewon Hyun’s “Floor Plan Cabinet”（2025）

Artist

Seewon Hyun

Graduated Korean National University of Arts with a thesis about Korean contemporary art. Having published Walking Magazine with her friends since the spring of 2006, she worked as a reporter in the esc team of the Hankyoreh Newspaper. She has written diverse articles since then, including her book Design: Opposite Poles (Haggojae, 2010). Hyun also organized art exhibitions such as Cheonsu Mart 2nd Floor (National Theatre Company of Korea 2011 / Festival “Bom” 2012) and Be Awakened, You Command Group (2010), as well as some projects like Writing Band (2012). She is the co-founder of Audio Visual Pavilion (AVP Lab), and has been the sole director since 2017.

Curator

Dain Oh

Dain Oh is a curator based in Seoul. She is interested in an interdisciplinary approach to identify and challenge categorical boundaries based on hidden, discriminatory sociopolitical agendas. Navigating between the vast and the intimate, she works across seemingly distant grammars and material realities of heterogeneous systems while engaging with specificities of individual artistic practices. Currently a curator at Barakat Contemporary in Seoul, she has curated solo exhibitions of artists such as Nicky Nodjoumi, Pratchaya Phinthong, Michael Rakowitz, Jewyo Rhii, Jimmy Robert, Wael Shawky, and Alex Verhaest. Other recent projects include Rondi Park’s first solo exhibition at White Noise in Seoul and Chung Seoyoung’s exhibition catalogue for the Seoul Museum of Art, titled What I Saw Today, as co-editor. Dain holds a BFA in Film, Video, and New Media from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MA from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College.

Designer

Moonsick Gang

Moonsick Gang, born in 1986 in Seoul, is currently based in Seoul. The artist received aBachelor of Arts in Graphic Design from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdamand a Master of Fine Arts in Graphic Design from Yale University. Moonsick Gangrejects the notion of a finalized, standardized outcome, instead embracing an openstructure that evolves into constantly changing forms. For Gang, the process ofcontinuous transformation and latent potential is not only integral but forms the essenceof his work, challenging fixed meanings and prioritizing the act of becoming.