Seoul, August 6 – September 7, 2016, COS Store Cheongdam, Apgujeong-ro 418, Gangnam-gu, Seoul
Continuing the past exhibition lineage hovering between art and design, COS invited The Book Society, a well-known artist’s book store in Seoul, to host a temporary curated extension of the store in the COS store. Designer Na Kim (who designed the store’s logo) and Helen Ku from The Book Society remained the curators, same as in the prior show.
The exhibition space was a combination of the clean and simple store design as it could have been experienced while walking among the clothes racks in the floors below. Here selected art books replaced the clothes, and there have been further design interventions: Small (of a size comparable to a book) painted objects by Na Kim, and three sequentially featured guest artists.
During my visit, the guest artists was the graphic designer couple Shin Shin (Haeok Shin and Donghyeok Shin). A historical version of the Bibliophile’s Booklets (a collection of texts exploring the mania and passion of for books first published in 1926, based on the press release) was on display, juxtaposed with a design response by Shin Shin: A poster based on the original books type and layout design, and a series of framed prints taking the booklets as a starting point. The actual content of the booklets was not available.
This store-in-a-store exhibit has been soaked in design, really a crossover between consumer product display, art exhibition and design showcase. It catered to the longing for simplicity and order, as it is experienced in the Muji stores. It catered to the longing for the uniqueness and intimacy of experience one expects from engaging with artworks. And it catered to the longing for a visual harmony of colors, shapes and materials. It also made me think of Takashi Murakami’s Louis Vuitton handbag store placed in the middle of his exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (2007). It is probably this nature of the book in between mass product, unique art object and decorative element, not unlike the Murakami’s handbags, that maintains its popularity even when, according to some, it should have been swept away by technological evolution by now.
