Heecheon Kim
Deep in the Forking Tanks
Art Sonje Center, Seoul

Featuring a single, monolithic screen with the video projected onto its center, the exhibition commenced with a disorienting, pitch-black corridor illuminated by a sparse row of minute lightbulbs on the ground. Such immersive darkness was hardly unprecedented or inventive, but it was a remarkably well-executed formal device that served as an apt prelude to Kim’s submarine forays. The video introduces sensory-deprivation tanks—pod-shaped structures that are impervious to external stimuli and filled with body-temperature saltwater that allows the supine user inside to float effortlessly—as sites where multiple registers of sensory confusion are possible. In his characteristically juvenile voice, Kim reads from a Spanish text outlining the effects of these tanks on the human body: Blinking extremely slowly within the tank can induce a disjunction between the sense of sight and movements of the eye. A diver deep in the ocean might have a similar experience should her lights start to malfunction.