Heecheon Kim's Virtual Worlds Probe Reality in Seoul and London Exhibitions

Heecheon Kim's 2023 video work Cutter III, commissioned by Seoul's National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA), was displayed last May in the museum's Seoul Box gallery. The artist, who works from a shared studio in Mapo, Seoul, used a game engine to create the piece, confronting technical challenges while building entire virtual environments from scratch. Kim's practice explores how technology mediates daily life through tools like face-swap apps, CGI, and augmented reality, yet he insists his focus lies more on societal obsessions than on software itself. His work references online communities such as Ilbe and QAnon as reflections of human desires. Following his 2015 solo exhibition Wall Rally Drill at Common Center in Seoul, Kim presented a solo show at Art Sonje Center in 2019 and received the Hermès Foundation Missulsang award in 2023. His pieces have entered collections at MMCA, Kadist, and Leeum Museum of Art. In December, he held his first institutional solo exhibition in London at the Hayward Gallery's project space. Trained as an architect, Kim frequently returns to Seoul's psychogeography, examining its urban anomalies where digital renderings can be replicated exactly in reality. His earlier works featured Spanish monologues, a language he learned during a year in Argentina, to create artistic distance. Kim argues that virtual worlds and reality share similar constraints, with both requiring narrative creation within set limitations.