VOID-Exhibition Space Design for Buddha Sculptor

"VOID" was an exhibition presenting the important transformation of sculptor Jiang Sheng's creative career and spiritual journey.Sheng's creative career and spiritual journey. The venue of the exhibition was the "Black Box Theatre" of DOME Studio, Beijing, China. The entrance to the exhibition was purposely set at the side door of the theater, so that visitors would have to walk through a light and bright café, then turn into a narrow and enclosed aisle to enter the exhibition hall at the end of it. The planning of this moving line retained the existing montage-style drama attribute of the theater on the one hand, on the other hand it also provided a buffer zone for the exhibition experience through the transitional space at the entrance. Unlike the traditional way of displaying exhibits in specific booths, this exhibition completely eliminated the distance between exhibits and visitors.Inspired by the Indian Step Wells, the design abandoned color attributes and decorative elements by using simple geometric shapes to build a layered sense of order in the site, a dramatic "room of void" with only undulating terrain and air. A matrix platform composed of 132 1 m x 1 m cubic units looked like a circular ladder with no beginning and no end.The design perfectly utilized the height of the space to build the site in a staggered manner, providing the viewers with a variety of viewing angles: sometimes the Buddha statue is in the high place; sometimes in the low place; sometimes at the eye level. In the “void” exhibition space, people are the viewers and also the view, so to speak, 'being in it and not knowing what it is, leaping out the picture and being enlightened'. In this room named "void", the sculptures themselves were brimming with emotion. For example, the crystal clear glaze material commonly used by the artist was presented in highly saturated color with solid tone in this room of void. Two altars were specially designed for the exhibition of Buddha statues which meant to add warmth to these stereotypically solemn and unapproachable religious devices, and make them closer to concept of "daily, peaceful, ancient yet approachable". Functionally integrated with the floor lamps, the altars were following the design language of layered sense of order. They not only connected the space with people and things in it in a tangible and invisible way but also adding a solemn and secret sense of ritual to the Buddha statue.