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Matali Crasset: Reflexcity

At Gwangju’s Asia Culture Center, Matali Crasset designed a series of out-of-proportion acoustic dish antennas that seem to be trying to capture or send messages to the beyond.

Reflexcity is a permanent installation at the ACC Asia Culture Center in Gwangju, Korea. According to the designer Matali Crasset, it is a remarkable time-space where fiction develops. The project is initially perceived overall, outside, through the glass façade. Out-of-proportion acoustic dish antenna spread out all through the space can be detected, on the ground floor and on mezzanine.

Matali Crasset Reflexcity — Matali Crasset: Reflexcity, ACC Asia Culture Center, Gwangju

They are so large that they seem to be trying to capture or send messages to the beyond. They are all of different diameters, different colours: variations of coloured metallic grey, their metallic aspect creates a shimmering with the source of natural light and also with the lighting sources integrated into the very structure. Entering the space, visitors understand that these are human “sensors”. They seem to be attracted by these circular forms and cluster together above, within and around with special rituals.

Matali Crasset: Reflexcity, ACC Asia Culture Center, Gwangju

The first sensor invites you to stop on entry. Its circular shape rising up all around protects flow. In the same space, a double sensor, one above the other, forms a capsule on stilts. By going up to the first floor it is understood how it can be reached, by a hidden walkway which runs along the staircase. It makes a true viewpoint on the whole floor. On the mezzanine floor, the sensor becomes a podium; it is reached by a ramp, the reflector becoming a luminous arch which must be crossed in order to sit down in heart that is both coloured and soft. A fourth inclined sensor shelters a large dining table, it protects the guests and lights them at the same time.

Finally, in a separate room, a sensor/diffuser on a human scale is turned outwards where a row of bamboo is growing. You come to rest alone in its centre, half lying: face to face with nature, to meditate or more. A work that searches claims the diversity of being and being together. Which invites informality and singularity around a legible form that everyone can take over. A work which diverts the symbolic from the technology (the acoustic dish antenna) to recentre on what is human. Putting the human being at the centre of the device, a quest common to all Matali Crasset’s projects.