Raon (Donghyeon) Kim

Clothing and sculpture.
Traces of touch, held in material.

RAONBEAT brings together clothing and sculptural work by Raon (Donghyeon) Kim, a South Korean artist and fashion designer based in London.

Working across garments, sculpture and installation, his practice explores bodily absence, intimacy and the traces left by contact. Through leather, tailoring, moulding and casting, he considers how a material can retain the presence of a body.

Clothing is available through made-to-order enquiries.

RAONBEAT는 런던을 기반으로 활동하는 아티스트이자 패션 디자이너 라온 김동현의 의류와 조각 작업을 선보입니다.

의류, 조각, 설치를 통해 몸의 부재와 친밀감, 접촉이 남긴 흔적을 탐구합니다. 가죽과 테일러링, 성형과 캐스팅을 오가며 몸이 떠난 뒤에도 재료에 남는 존재의 감각을 다룹니다.

의류는 주문 제작 문의를 통해 안내합니다.

raonbeatstudio@gmail.com ↗Instagram ↗Shop — made to order ↗

Artist statement +

Raon (Donghyeon) Kim (b. 1994) is a South Korean artist and fashion designer based in London, working across body-based sculpture, installation, fashion. Grounded in his lived experience as a gay man, his practice investigates the afterlife of intimacy between men: what remains when a body withdraws, an encounter ends or a relationship changes form. Rather than treating separation as simple absence, he examines how care, consent, vulnerability and belonging continue through bodily memory and material residue.

Kim’s work begins with the relationship between the body and the garment. He approaches clothing not simply as something to be worn, but as a surface of retention capable of carrying warmth, pressure, touch and the memory of use after the wearer has gone. Through pattern cutting, leather construction, warm-water moulding and body casting, he produces garments and fragmented bodily forms that make absence physically perceptible.

Materials are selected for their capacity to register contact, duration and transformation. Leather stretches, creases, contracts and retains the pressure of the body, while wax, sugar, china clay and silver leaf melt, fracture, tarnish or accumulate traces over time. These processes allow material change to operate as both evidence of an encounter and a record of what can no longer be directly accessed.

In his installations, garments, body casts, shoes, masks and metal structures are suspended or arranged as spatial compositions. Rather than reconstructing the absent body as a complete figure, Kim uses fragments, voids, scale and distance to suggest a presence that remains legible through its effects. His work approaches intimacy not only as an emotional experience, but as a structure formed through attention, negotiated vulnerability, protection and responsibility.

Experiences of puppy play, chosen family and encounters between gay men enter the work as relational systems through which trust, boundaries, care and recognition can be examined. Concealment, anonymity and bodily codes become conditions through which intimacy may be enabled, while casts, garments and altered surfaces preserve the consequences of those encounters without fully exposing them.

Moving between fashion and sculpture, Kim considers how a garment changes when it passes from the living body into the gallery. Clothing may initially be activated through wear, but it can continue as an autonomous object once the body has departed. By shifting garments between use, display and sculptural installation, he treats fashion as a spatial and material practice through which intimate bodily knowledge can be communicated without being made completely visible.

Biography & selected background

Kim studied Fashion Design Menswear at De Montfort University before completing the Graduate Diploma in Fashion and Textiles at the Royal College of Art with distinction in 2025. In 2026, he completed an MA in Fashion at the Royal College of Art, supported by the Logitech Diversity Scholarship and the Leathersellers’ Bursary. His work has been exhibited internationally across London, Seoul and Hong Kong, including presentations at APLF Hong Kong and the Korean Leather Artists Association Exhibition. In 2026, he undertook a residency at Joya AiR in Spain, where he further developed his research into body-based sculpture, material transformation and embodied memory.