León Duval — Spatial Possibilities

The exhibition Gânyìng Resonance, was held in the Macchina Gallery in 2023, located inside the Campus Oriente, Universidad Católica de Chile and got the support of the Instituto de Estética and the Instituto Confucio. The event was preceded by a research fund granted to the professor of the Institute of Aesthetics (PUC), Dr. Claudia Lira, who was my thesis director at the same institute and hired me to interpret her research to its spatialisation along with its atmosphere. 

The project proposed a sensory journey through images, projections and translucent reflections derived from a profound empirical research committed by Dr. Lira around three sacred mountains located in China: Tai Shan, Song Shan, and Hua Shan. Resonancia was part of a collective exhibition integrated by two different projects located in two separate floors of the Galeria Macchina. 

The exhibition space was articulated through the design of two continuous rooms in the lower floor of the gallery resembling the walks of the professor on her research in China, and creating an ascending tour through the senses. Both spaces were designed as a continuation but as opposites. The first one, at the entrance, was louder, introductory, and illuminated, and the second one, silent, intimate and darker. The tour began with the projection of noisy edited recordings that occurred in the case study spaces, and continued by entering and passing through a suspended and translucent curtain into a contemplative interior. Crossing the curtain, a great leaf mandala was displayed, reproducing textures, colours, smells, aromas, and figures of the mountains and its aesthetics. Inviting the visitors to meditate and contemplate. Around, the space was completed by three simultaneous audiovisual projections displayed on the three walls, of images obtained during the research trips to the three mountains. Each one of the three walls were representing the three mountains in the order of its sacred way of ascension.

The venue finished with a colloquium on May 24, 2023 where I was invited to expose the design intervention. The presentation was named Transmedial Spaces and it consisted on the process of interpretation and spatial visualisation of the research derived from the many conversations with the professor Dr. Claudia Lira.