Kiaf Special Exhibition 2 《VIRTUAL VITAL》
《VIRTUAL VITAL》 Curatorial Statement
Nowhere in the exhibition space is there a physical artwork. Only when viewers scan a QR code and look through an augmented reality (AR) screen do the works at last reveal themselves in the once-empty space.
《VIRTUAL VITAL》, the special exhibition of Kiaf SEOUL 2026, realizes physical artworks in AR on the fairgrounds. The title combines “virtual” and “vital.” Can the vitality of an artwork live and stir even where matter has left its place? This exhibition is an occasion to seek that answer in the very heart of an art fair.
The four participating artists have all engaged persistently with the body and materiality. Hyungkoo Lee presents two drawings from the 《ANIMATUS》 series, in which he has anatomically analyzed the bodies of virtual characters and recreated them as if they were real. Rendered in AR through high-resolution precision imaging, the works transcend the physical distance and lighting constraints of viewing the actual pieces, letting viewers examine the pencil lines and anatomical notations from even closer than the original drawings allow. Jaeyeol Han is a painter who dismantles and reassembles images of human faces and bodies. Placed in space without a physical canvas, his paintings appear differently each time, according to the viewer’s position and movement. Intan Kwak makes sculptures of heightened tactility by kneading clay by hand. ‘Movement 4’, born of the contactless environment of the pandemic, exists only virtually among countless physical works, acquiring a paradoxical rarity. Xooang Choi embraces AR realization as a process through which sculpture enters into relation with a new environment and acquires another body. ‘The Garden of Monsters’, present before the eyes yet beyond touch, stirs a sensation distinct from that of the actual sculpture.
The virtual in 《VIRTUAL VITAL》 is neither a degraded copy of the original nor its substitute. It is a new condition of viewing—magnifying, circling, overlaying—and, in Jaeyeol Han’s words, “a gateway that brings viewers to stand before the original.” In this exhibition, where technology has erased matter, viewers may find themselves all the more curious about the warmth of the physical work. The vitality of art this exhibition seeks to prove lies in that very thirst.
