“Under the Vein; I Spell on You” (2012) is an HD video project capturing two people taking a walk along a trail by a stream. They are dowsing for the water’s source as they carry a divining rod. Yet since this stream is not natural but artificial, “the vein of the water” is in fact a water tap turned on by town center employees. The work was produced based on the pleasure of walking and kind of betrayal Koo felt upon finding the truth during her walk along a stream. On the other hand, the invisible water vein is overlapped with another invisible vein in the human body: blood veins. The act of drawing on the forearm is in fact the same as searching for blood veins and drawing them as if searching for water veins. In turn, the act of looking for a water vein is overlapped with the act of searching for a blood vein centered on the expression “vein,” thereby creating a word play. The video work conveys a sense of futility when the main character washes away the lines on the arm that are linked to the disappointment caused by the discovery of the artificial stream. Thus, several clues are given, which are overlapped in the work, and enable viewers to have experiential thoughts of crossing the boundaries of realism and simulation. Beginning from her personal experiences, Koo covers the sequences of meaning over elements selected in an impromptu manner, thereby encouraging viewers to reconsider everyday life or issues affecting society.
Koo Donghee (b. 1974) graduated from the Department of Sculpture at Hongik University in 1998 and received her master’s degree from Yale University in 2000. Starting her career in Korea at SSamzie Space Studio Program in 2002, Koo was selected for the Akademie Schloss Solitude fellowship in Germany and Tokyo Wonder Site Residency. She has also participated in various group exhibitions and biennales at home and abroad, focusing on media art projects. She is the recipient of the 1st Doosan Yonkang Art Award in 2010; and the 13th Hermes Foundation Art Award in 2012. Koo was nominated for Korea Artist Prize from National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in 2014.
Koo Donghee begins her projects as incidentals from everyday life. Koo finds specific themes based on her personal experiences and subjective instincts for these experiences, then pursues and collects images and information about them for her projects. But in the end her works do not form an autobiographic narrative. In the face of the deluge of images via the Internet search, she recreates a new, adapted virtual narrative, which is different from the original intention. During this process, Koo shifts her position from being “an experiencer” to being “an observer” in the most natural way. Her world created as such―although it appears realistic―is the story of a somehow distorted “gap” where fiction and reality overlap subtly, but never coincide, sliding just past each other. By sharing obscure experiences from artificial landscapes and realistic synthetic objects with viewers, Koo raises questions of time and space, where we live without the slightest inquiry, as well as questioning every general and visual object.
