The text prepares you for a work which addresses themes of surveillance, appearance and reality. Just inside the door is a piece of text from which the title of the work is taken: The first door takes you into a small, sectioned-off portion of the tank, in which Kim has installed his film “From the Commanding Heights…” (2006), which lasts for about half an hour. Much care has been taken in the staging of the installation, particularly in the main part of the tank, with projection screens defining the focus of individual spaces, but there being little formal definition between them as you wander around the huge area enjoying different angles of view, and watching the changing reflection of the videos in the reflective surfaces in the room. Once inside the space, as if to add to the confusion, you are likely to trip over loudspeakers or little platforms which are designed for sitting on or which conceal the film projectors.

And then you return again for more.Īs you enter the East Tank – whichever door you enter – you’re likely to bump into someone exiting as your eyes struggle to adjust to the darkness. You find out more about Seoul’s urban development in the 1960s and beyond, or about Park Chung-hee’s rumoured dalliances. You return, you take more notes, you go away and google the fragments of poetry you note down to see where they came from, trying to piece together more of the puzzle. It’s the most baffling, mystifying, tantalising exhibition I’ve seen in a long while, but it also holds out the hope that each time you visit it you’ll get some more enlightenment. Sung Hwan Kim: The Tanks Commission, 2012 (installation view) I haven’t succeeded yet, and indeed I’m not at all sure it’s possible fully to resolve the into a coherent whole the many conflicting strands in the installation, but I’ll still be going back for more. So far I’ve probably spent seven hours over the course of five visits trying to figure out the massive installation in the Tate Modern by 37 year old Sung Hwan Kim (김성환).

Tate modern the tanks 2016 film