What the Exhibition "Even on the Day the Waiting Ends" at Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art Tells Us About Circulation and Sustainability

Visiting an exhibition together with the team always awakens new sensibilities. The more each person shares the moments that struck them, the more this holds true. This time, the texture of that conversation felt unusually deep. The SPACEBASE designers lingered especially long in front of works on the theme of the climate crisis. They spoke repeatedly of the words ‘regeneration and circulation,’ taking time to turn their meaning over. While visiting this exhibition, the SPACEBASE team stepped away from the rhythm of busy daily life for a moment and spent a day walking at a different pace. This piece is a record of watching designers refresh their senses and expand their thinking.

Image source: Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art

How to Exhibit Waiting

Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art’s special exhibition 《Even on the Day the Waiting Ends》 is an exhibition on the theme of the climate crisis. It artistically unfolds the disappearance, recovery, and creation brought about by environmental destruction, presenting ‘waiting’ not as a simple standstill but as a time of circulation.

This exhibition was conceived with inspiration drawn from the poetry of the poet Kim Hyung-young, sensuously reinterpreting the relationships among the city, nature, and humanity. Its composition—revealing the city and the traces of time through the textures of the visual, the auditory, and the material—had the power to draw designers away from the function-centered thinking so familiar to them.

The greatest impression the SPACEBASE team took from the exhibition was the concept of ‘sustainability.’ At the point where disappearance and destruction caused by environmental damage cross paths with recovery and creation, art presents ‘waiting’ not as a halt but as a time of circulation. The principle of circulation that art reveals applies to design as well. It poses the question of how long a space can keep breathing and changing alongside the people within it.

The Time and Circulation the Exhibition Holds

The exhibition begins with the remnants of the city and moves through the transfer of matter, regeneration, and the recovery of life. The intensity of light, the reverberation of sound, and the shifts in material created the rhythm of the space and formed a single narrative.

The sensory shifts felt while walking along the space were connected to what design calls ‘temporality.’ A space is not a fixed form; it changes ceaselessly amid light, sound, and movement. This exhibition conveyed that change not as a visual experience but as a sensory one.

The SPACEBASE team viewed the exhibition together and talked about how space can hold time. This reminded us that the spaces we work with, too, must grow and change together with time, like a living being.

Lee Ji-yeon’s 〈Sound of Ash〉: Traces Left by Disappearance

The work the team lingered over longest was Lee Ji-yeon’s 〈Sound of Ash〉. By firing used and discarded briquettes several more times to turn them into pots in which plants can grow, this work prompted a rethinking of the circulation of resources. It was a participatory piece, completed by drawing visitors in to become part of the work itself.

The scene where briquettes, moss, and water came together showed the moment when everyday materials are regenerated into art. The artist focused on the temperature of memory that each generation holds toward briquettes. Once a household necessity and a symbol of charity, the briquette now remains an emotional medium within the city’s landscape.

On-site, the artist personally dismantled the work and handed it out to visitors as ‘companion pots,’ a performance that let them experience the concept of ‘circulation’ firsthand. This experience, combining the regeneration of materials with the circulation of time, made us think about how design can expand into a sustainable process.

A Sensibility for Contemplating Sustainability

Sustainability is not a mere trend but a question of how long the spaces we create can keep breathing and dwelling within people’s lives. The ‘aesthetics of waiting’ explored in the exhibition was a principle that applies just as directly to design. We felt anew that waiting is not a halt but a preparation for what comes next, and a part of change and circulation. For the SPACEBASE team, this time was an experience of feeling that meaning in the body and expanding it into thought.

Through repeated viewing and conversation, the team reflected on the spaces they have created so far and the spaces they will create going forward. The belief that a space can become a vessel that holds time led, beyond simple observation, to a resolve that design can contribute to circulation. The time within the exhibition, met at a slow pace, was a moment that made the SPACEBASE team’s design philosophy all the firmer.

*Photos provided by editor Ryu Jin

👉 《Even on the Day the Waiting Ends》 Exhibition Introduction Page