Reconstructing Sequences

Donghee Kim

〈The Watchtower〉, 2024.

Installation, metal pipe, wooden panel, glass, dimensions variable.
Commissioned by the National Asian Culture Center. Courtesy of the artist.

〈The Beach〉, 2024.

Installation, former Jeollanam-do Provincial Office building debris, sand, tarp, dimensions variable.
Commissioned by the National Asian Culture Center. Courtesy of the artist.

Donghee Kim is an artist and spatial designer who references the materials and forms of urban architecture and structures to respond to and intervene in spaces. His work, seeping into the evolving city like temporarily transparent or translucent layers, aligns with the desire to create “a different space” that appears to float and wander.

The Watchtower and The Beach connect with the white temporary fence installed for the restoration of the former Jeollanam-do Provincial Office. They bring to mind winter beaches that have been closed for the season. Due to strong winds in winter, beaches are covered with a white protective material to prevent sand drifting. The artist works with the image of a watchtower standing alone on a covered winter beach as his motif.

The Watchtower exhibits a composite form, integrating various types of watchtowers—a watchtower for monitoring and rescuing, a watchtower for observing the landscape along a territorial border in 360 degrees, and a watchtower designed for protecting something. In The Beach, the artist places bricks and concrete from the restoration site of the former Jeollanam-do Provincial Office on the beach protective cover. Images that were lost through the high tides of construction are brought back to the surface during the low tides of restoration.

* The ACC Interactive Art Lab explores the interaction between art, technology, and society through creative productions. The project develops Donghee Kim’s The Watchtower and The Beach into an AR-based interactive convergent work, inviting viewers to communicate psychologically with the artworks. Viewers create their own paths as they wander or stay in The Beach, with The Watchtower serving as the starting point. They may compare their paths with those of other viewers in real time, share images of their paths, and discover each viewer’s sounds or images throughout the space. Both the physical artworks and digital elements reflecting imagination are viewed together in a regular exhibition space. The project is at once a spatial intervention that evokes personal aspects of a place as well as an experiment that pushes the boundaries of perception and experience through interactions between the virtual and the real. The artist plans to compile viewers’ trajectories, accumulated layer by layer over time, and reflect them in his future work.