Kim Heecheon (b. 1989) explores how digital technology influences our visual and perceptual experiences in everyday life, as well as our altered sense of reality as a result. His work often engages with digital interfaces that translate physical time and space into data, such as face-swapping mobile apps, virtual reality, and Google Earth. 

While dealing with volatile, virtual images generated by these technologies, he blurs the boundary between the virtual and the real by interweaving autobiographical narratives documented through documentary footage.

Kim Heecheon’s work not only explores contemporary perceptions of the virtual and the real in the digital age, but also uniquely deepens his practice by raising existential questions—such as death—through these mediated experiences. Since his early works, he has engaged with ontological concerns, examining how concepts like life, death, and memory are translated, deleted, or backed up as data. 

For example, his debut work Lifting Barbells (2015) weaves together a personal narrative about the sudden passing of his father, the complex emotions that followed, and reflections on the sprawling city of Seoul where he resides.

The video unfolds in the form of letters the artist wrote to his girlfriend. Spanning four correspondences between December 2014 and early 2015, the piece interweaves its contents with screen imagery that blends real-life scenes of Seoul with virtual landscapes.
 
The virtual images of Seoul were created using data recorded by the GPS fitness watch worn by the artist’s father on the day of his sudden accident. By reconfiguring the traces left behind in digital form, Kim constructs a visual narrative that poses the question: What is the city that we experience? 

In the process, the artist discovered how GPS data could be precisely layered over Google Maps. As he retraces his father's digital footprints, he reflects on moments when the boundary between reality and the virtual becomes indistinguishable—suggesting a world where the real and the simulated are inextricably intertwined.

Kim Heecheon’s exploration of autobiographical narratives that traverse the boundaries between online and offline urban environments begins with Lifting Barbells (2015) and continues through works such as Soulseek/Pegging/Air-twerking (2015) and Wall Rally Drill (2015). In Soulseek/Pegging/Air-twerking, the artist uses the 3D modeling software 3ds Max to "import" elements of reality, recombining them into newly constructed worlds, which are then "exported" back into reality—illustrating a cyclical relationship between the virtual and the real. 

Through this process, Kim examines a spatiotemporal realm in which the distinction between data and the physical world has become meaningless. He critically reflects on a life in which hard drive capacity determines our very presence in the digital realm, offering a sardonic view of reality as a flattened screen.

In Wall Rally Drill, the final work of the trilogy, Kim Heecheon repeatedly presents flat reflections of Seoul on the glass windows of buildings, layering these images with our own flattened perception of the world through screens. In the video’s closing scene, the artist, reflected on a monitor showing the landscape of Seoul, silently faces his father—no longer present in the real world, but visible on screen. 

Kim poses existential questions about things that physically exist yet feel misaligned, things that no longer exist physically but persist as data, and the ghost-like presence of “us” that floats beyond the screen’s glass. By continuously “importing” and “exporting” across the virtual and physical realms, his work captures the condition of contemporary individuals who endlessly “rally” between being everywhere and nowhere at once.

In his 2016 work Sleigh Ride Chill, Kim Heecheon begins with the personal experience of losing his laptop and smartphone to explore the endless circulation and sharing of personal data in online spaces. The development of the internet and IT technologies has enabled people from different times and places to easily share and replicate each other’s stories, images, and videos through digital networks.

Kim Heecheon captures the unsettling reality that personal information, once shared and circulated in digital spaces, can never be fully erased — and that it inevitably seeps into the physical world. For example, in a scene where the faces of passersby are replaced with the artist’s own, he visualizes a nightmarish scenario in which his leaked personal data dominates not just the virtual realm but invades his offline life as well.

In his 2019 solo exhibition 《Deep in the Forking Tanks》 at Art Sonje Center, Kim Heecheon explored the phenomenon of technology becoming increasingly invisible as it advances. In the eponymous work Deep in the Forking Tanks (2019), the artist enters a floating tank—also known as a sensory deprivation tank—to undergo a simulated diving experience. Inside the tank, physical sensations dissipate, allowing the participant to focus entirely on their own consciousness. 

However, as the immersion continues, a moment arises when it becomes difficult to distinguish whether one is still in simulation or actually underwater. At the point where awareness of physical reality begins to fade, other forms of sensory stimulation generated by the tank start to intensify.

In this work, the tank functions as a metaphorical frame that both blurs and emphasizes the boundary between reality and the virtual. At the same time, the artist overlays footage of real-life scenes with digital applications such as face-modifying apps, making visible the presence of today’s digital technologies that trigger alternate perceptions of reality. 

Through this approach, Kim Heecheon presents strange, disorienting scenarios where virtual sensations and reality become indistinguishable, and their boundaries dissolve. His work suggests that we are living inside a vast simulation, and yet, unknowingly, we may already be immersed in another temporal world—the “tank.” This provokes an existential question for the viewer: Where do I end?

In this way, Kim Heecheon has consistently explored the issues revealed through the mediation of technology between reality and the virtual. In Cutter III (2023), presented at the MMCA’s special exhibition 《Game Society》, the artist asks whether human life and existence can consider the world outside of the game made of tens of thousands of selectable options.

The work includes a game built on Unity, a single-channel video and sound, applied with the Instant NeRF technology. Through the technology, 2D image data from thirty-five CCTVs in the Seoul Box in MMCA is converted into 3D in real time.  

Cutter III reflects on ‘us as more concrete beings than ourselves.’ It physically visualizes existential problems by drifting between reality and virtuality, existence and non-existence, real time and image, in a situation where the concrete concept of real-time is expanded.

Kim Heecheon, as the winner of the 20th Hermès Foundation Misulsang, presented a new cinematic experiment in his solo exhibition 《Studies》 (Atelier Hermès, 2024), adopting the horror genre as a narrative framework. The video work of the same title, Studies (2024), takes as its motif a series of incidents occurring within a high school wrestling team ahead of a national tournament. It delves into fear triggered by human existential instability—such as disappearance, bodily distortion, and errors in memory and data.
 
The video depicts the disappearance of opposing players, inducing feelings of anxiety and fear, which metaphorically represent the deletion and corruption of data. As the video progresses, the recorded faces of the athletes appear blurred or layered, eventually smudging and stretching out—deliberately revealing the technical flaws within what is presumed to be the perfect world of data. 

While the presence of the self becomes increasingly vague and distorted, the dissonant voice-over narration and clichéd horror sound effects amplify a sense of primal fear evoked by an unknown and uncertain world.

Kim Heecheon employs fear as a psychological device to disrupt the seemingly stable foundation of contemporary society, where everything is reduced to digital data values. In doing so, he paradoxically opens a space for repressed emotions to be released, offering a potential for liberation from the system. 

Living amid vast amounts of data and algorithms, today’s individuals gradually lose a fundamental sense of who they are and how their existence can be validated. In Studies, Kim foregrounds the fear that arises from this condition, urging viewers to confront the question of the self head-on.

In this way, Kim Heecheon has continuously posed existential questions about the self situated within a world where the virtual and the real converge, beginning with his inquiry into the relationship between the physical world and the virtual space of the screen. By employing the technological interfaces that permeate our daily lives, his work prompts reflection on how our existence and way of life are reshaped and repositioned within these mediated environments

 ”The current technological environment makes it too easy and continues to make us feel I’m the only “me,” a continuous “me.” Not only does it make us experience this in the first-person, but also confirms and guarantees that I’m at the center of the world when I experience the world.”   (Kim Heecheon, from the Atelier Hermès Guidebook - conversation with Soyeon Ahn) 

Kim Heecheon received his B.Arch. from Korea National University of Arts. His recent solo exhibitions include 《Studies》 (Atelier Hermès, Seoul, 2024), 《Double Poser》 (Hayward Gallery HENI project space, London, 2023), 《Deep in the Forking Tanks》 (Art Sonje Center, Seoul, 2019), 《Lifting Barbells》 (Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, 2018), 《Kim Heecheon》 (DOOSAN Gallery, New York, 2018), and more.
 
In addition, Kim has participated in group exhibitions at major institutions both in Korea and abroad, including the Leeum Museum of Art (Seoul, 2024, 2021), the MNAC (Bucharest, 2023), Centre Pompidou-Metz (Metz, 2023), the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (Seoul, 2023), the Nam June Paik Art Center (Yongin, 2023), Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art (Ansan, 2022), Atelier Hermès (Seoul, 2020), and ZKM | Center for Art and Media (Karlsruhe, 2019). He has also been invited to major biennials such as the Busan Biennale (2020), Gwangju Biennale (2018), and Seoul Mediacity Biennale (2016). 

Kim Heecheon is the recipient of several prestigious awards, including the Hermès Foundation Misulsang (2023), the Biennale Prize at the 13th Cairo Biennale (2019), and the Doosan Yonkang Art Awards (2016). His works are included in the collections of numerous institutions, such as the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea; Seoul Museum of Art; Nam June Paik Art Center; Leeum Museum of Art; the Han Nefkens Foundation (Spain); and KADIST (USA).

References

• 김희천, Kim Heecheon (Artist Website)
• 아뜰리에 에르메스, 스터디 (Atelier Hermès, Studies)
• 아트선재센터, 탱크 (Art Sonje Center, Deep in the Forking Tanks)
• 두산아트센터, 김희천 (DOOSAN Art Center, Kim Heecheon)
• 국립현대미술관, 김희천 | 바벨 | 2015 (National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA), Kim Heecheon | Lifting Barbells | 2015) 
• 에스콰이어, 기술 삽입 시대의 김희천, 2023.05.02 
• 경기문화재단, 현재의 가장자리 (Gyeonggi Cultural Foundation, Edge of Now) 
• 국립현대미술관, 김희천 | 썰매 | 2016 (National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA), Kim Heecheon | Sleigh Ride Chill | 2016)
• 국립현대미술관, 게임사회 (National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA), Game Society)
• ANTIEGG, 완벽한 기술의 호러 김희천의 ‘스터디’, 2024.09.30