Between the Virtual and Reality

Minseok Kang’s installation work begins with visualizing the relationships of attraction and repulsion that arise between humans and objects, and between objects and space. Through the competing forms of cars controlled by human hands, he reveals states in which invisible forces collide and intersect. This space is not conceived as a simple physical site, but as a field saturated with countless energies. Human breathing, the sound of acceleration, the roar of car engines, and the incessant noises of the city together construct a virtual space that intensifies sensory density.
The artist first materializes the sense of dissonance between reality and virtuality through VR, then brings that experience back into physical space. In this ambiguous zone—neither entirely virtual nor fully real—the VR environment allows exploration of sculptural forms imbued with distinct energies and sounds. As viewers move among these forms, they experience energies of varying density and character, expanding the entire space into an organic field of perception.
AR functions as a mirror through which this virtual space can be observed. Infinitely repeated sculptural images traverse the space at random, producing a sense of speed that erases form as it moves. Through this process, form remains unstable and continuously dissolves, while the boundary between virtual and real becomes increasingly blurred.
In this work, Kang conducts an experiment centered on the theme of invisible force, exploring a world filled with layered energies within virtual space through VR. Forces that cannot be perceived in reality are visualized in the virtual realm, where forces of attraction and repulsion operate like magnets, converging into sculptural forms of varying configurations. Each sculpture contains distinct energies and properties, and their distribution both shapes the rear silhouettes of competing cars and simultaneously dismantles those forms. The resulting space exists not as a clearly defined reality or a complete virtuality, but somewhere in between.
The car functions as the artist’s alter ego—a shadow of his inner self. A powerful desire to move forward, along with endless self-competition, generates bursts of color and energy that permeate the work. Unstoppable time is translated into speed, while invisible forces are rendered sensorially, like breathing or a violently beating heart. Kang’s installation expands these internal energies and sensations of speed across the entire space, guiding viewers to experience invisible force at the threshold between reality and virtuality.