Media Artist Exhibition 《Kim Hee-cheon: Moles》

The Seoul Museum of Art presents "Kim Heecheon: Moles," a media artist exhibition at the Seoseoul Museum of Art that embodies the 2026 exhibition theme, "Technology." The Seoseoul Museum of Art Media Artist Exhibition series focuses on major contemporary Korean media artists who have presented artistic perspectives on a rapidly changing society, interpreting their work from various angles and supporting the creation of new pieces.

"Kim Heecheon: Moles" is the first large-scale solo exhibition by Kim Heecheon, an artist who has offered critical perspectives on contemporary technological environments and visual culture. We live in a world where the boundary between the virtual and the real has become meaningless or has disappeared. The artist has questioned how the self is perceived and experienced in a world where technology becomes invisible and daily life is digitized.

This exhibition showcases <Cutter 3> and <Double Poser>, a spiritual series from 2023 that examines various issues created by the technological environment through the conditions, forms, and narratives of games. It also unveils <Lemon>, a new work set in a virtual game featuring the "mole"—an easter egg embedded in the two previous works—as the protagonist.

Here, the "mole" symbolizes the desire to escape an environment captured by technology, while simultaneously representing an entity that shakes the singular, fixed self imposed by technology. Another new work, <Malrin>, is a multi-channel video created with generative artificial intelligence (AI) that explores the near-future image ecosystem surrounding us, the changes the world will bring, and the perception of the self.

Additionally, the exhibition features about 80 photographs taken by the artist over a long period. Amidst the disappearance of certainty and identity, these photographs serve as images that perceive the existence and experience of "I" between personal memory and emotion, mediating the gap between the unpredictable world and the self.

Visitors will be able to examine the socio-cultural perspectives the artist has explored regarding the virtual and the real, existence and perception, time and space, life and death, digital senses and bodily cognition, and screens and interfaces. The exhibition is designed so that visitors can momentarily leave the surface of the earth and experience a sensory journey where reality and virtuality intersect, within a world where the artificial environment of the museum combines with the digital imagination constructed by the artworks themselves.

Source: Seoul Museum of Art website