Connecting people through art 

The exhibition Edge of Now – Three Rooms is a joined project by Nam June Paik Art Center of South Korea, the Chronus Art Center in Shanghai, and the ZKM | Karlsruhe to foster cultural exchange between China, South Korea, and Germany in the area of media art. The exhibition presents works by Chinese artist Yang Jian, South Korean artist Kim Heecheon, and German artist Verena Friedrich. The three artists, nominated by an international panel of experts and selected by the three collaborating institutions, reflect in their works how societies deal with contemporary technologies and media at the intersection of analog and digital practices.

​

The artist Kim Heecheon (born in 1989) first studied architecture at the Korea National University of Arts, before he rose to fame with his video works, becoming one of the best-known protagonists of the so-called post-Internet generation in Korea. In his works he engages with the perception of space and time in virtual and physical realities based on his own life experiences and with the rapid pace of change in South Korean society through the process of digitization. Three works by Kim Heecheon are presented in the exhibition: Lifting Barbells (2015), Sleigh Ride Chill (2016), and Every Smooth Thing through Mesher (2018), produced by the Han Nefkens Foundation,  in which pictures of Seoul, 3D renderings and sequences from video games with the aesthetics of virtual reality and augmented reality worlds fuse into post-apocalyptic video essays. The design of the videos reveals how the artist grapples with the hybrid forms of thought and perception resulting from an experience of reality that is shaped by digital technologies, in which the key to the world lies in being online at all times.