KiKi ARCHi turns dots, rays, and liquid splashes into rich 3D displays for INACTUEL show

inside Tan Zhuo’s sensory exhibition, inactuel

Artist Tan Zhuo opens her first solo exhibition, INACTUEL, at the Soul Art Center in Beijing, with more than 20 works expressing profound insights into life and technology, past and future, and individual existence. Japanese studio KiKi ARCHi takes on the spatial design of the show, starting from the artist’s philosophical vision, leveraging the content of the work and using the elements of the painting to connect the exhibition’s moving line, theme, and display form. Inspired by our three-dimensional space-time reality, the design team reshapes the framework of viewing the artworks and presents a rich sensory experience.

KiKi archi plays with space-time and three dimensionality

INACTUEL by Tan Zhuo begins with an acrylic arch that guides visitors into a narrow, 172 square meters room and a rectangular main exhibition area of 320 square meters. The special easels, composed of transparent bases and white backgrounds, make the paintings float in mid-air and play a rhythm in the stillness. The creative elements in the paintings become the blueprint for the classification and refinement of the exhibits by KiKi ARCHi (see more here): dots, rays, irregular slices, liquid shapes, etc., which leap out of the flat world and evolve into a new transmission medium, extending into three-dimensional space.

Standing in the long and narrow exhibition space, visitors notice red balls hovering vertically in mid-air, and the colorful carbon fiber lines ‘that connect heaven and earth. They guide the eyes to look up and shift, inspire people to explore and think in multiple dimensions and form a potential, blurred boundary to separate the different exhibition sections,’ explains KiKi ARCHi. At the main area, a sense of unsteady flow and energy takes over; a white liquid figure seemingly gushes out of the painting and covers the concrete floor, breaking the rule and frame of the front half, spreading freely. Meanwhile, a large, central chunk of white space offers a place for meditation and self-reflection. 

The work takes irregular geometric slices as the background, scattered around the white floor. With the help of the optical principle of the slice lamp, the design team projects the corresponding form on the wall, like a mirror, generating an intriguing contrast. These separate elements shuttling between the works, in the form of points, lines, and surfaces, build a dynamic balance, behind which is the operation of spatial thinking and logic. ‘When various elements continue to appear or disappear with the shift of sight and footsteps, the infinite unknown of the individual then appears, and the spiritual journey is finally harvested,’ concludes KiKi ARCHi. 

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project info:

exhibition name: INACTUEL
location: Soul Art Center, Beijing, China
spatial designer & photographer: KiKi ARCHi | @kikiarchi_jp_cn

director: Yoshihiko Seki

artist: Tan Zhuo

design team: Saika Akiyoshi, Simin Lin, Che Zeyu

period: 23.12.2023 – 09.01.2024
site area: 492 sqm