Ahyeon Ryu

Ahyeon Ryu(b.1996) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Seoul and London.

Education

Sculpture, BFA, Hongik University (2015-2020)

Sculpture, MA, Royal College of Art (2021-2023)

Upcoming

Solo Show ‘Outlet’ Museumhead, Seoul, South Korea (December 2023 – January, 2024)

Past

• ‘White Mirror: Prequel Version’, WWW space, Seoul, South Korea (2020)

• ‘K90-99’ Lupo Gallery, Milan, Italy (2023)

• ‘Black Fog, a Crack of Laughter Coming out on the Way to Work’ Gwangmyeoung Civic Center, Gwangmyeoung, South Korea (2022)

• ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ Museum Head, Seoul, South Korea (2022)

• ‘To you: Move Toward Where You Are’ Arko Museum, Seoul, South Korea (2022)

• ‘We Won’t Stop Showing’ SET, London, The UK (2022)

• ‘Are you afraid of severance?’ SAGA, Seoul, South Korea (2021)

• ‘Deep Time’ Bournemouth Natural Science Society, Bournemouth, The UK (2019)

• IAMGROUND, Urban Art Project - “Seoul is Museum” organized by the Seoul Metropolitan Government, Seoul, South Korea (2018)

Ahyeon Ryu explores how those with digital literacy perceive political and economic phenomena. Specifically, the artist aims to highlight the process of individuals’ identity-formation according to race, gender, region, and socioeconomic class becoming more and more commercialised and consumerist in quality.

The practice redefines materials’ authentic characteristics through movement, and establishes a new relationship with the audience. This is designed to nurture new political possibilities in the images distributed under the capitalist mechanism, in order to activate an alternative environment where the audience interacts with the images independently.

While the performance series White Mirror (2019-2020) delves into the voyeuristic gaze perpetuated by the media, The Triptych (2022) shifts to photography, focusing on the female spectatorship. Specifically, the work adopts the layout of fashion magazines, proactively bringing images of an objectified body–which has been unconsciously reproduced in daily lives–to the exhibition space. The Triptych parades the physical beauty to the forefront and idolises the subject, inducing the audience to identify themselves

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Mixed media

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Project Outlet is to explore the basic structure of image distribution in art and public culture. Here I aim to critically ask questions about the succession of production and consumption of spectacle, which is operating as the basis of global culture. The project Outlet represents the production process of images which are changed into commodities immediately.

This is a structure that is part of the Outlet project's fitting room. The performers will sit on this structure and insert their heads and limbs into translucent sheets installed in front of it.

Medium:

Mixed Media

Size:

Dimensions variable

In the project Outet, I will juxtapose two ways, in which the body is transformed into image commodities. The installation incarnates the experience of first entering a luxury shop. In such contexts, shoppers face fancy but somehow unrealistic images of mannequins exhibited in a showroom. However, their imaginary body is scattered as soon as they choose a garment and go into a fitting room in order to embody the image they received initially.

The sculptures will have the negative volume of the bodies. This can create an experience for the audience where they can feel their bodies fitting onto the sculptures and being scattered by the image.

Medium:

Mixed media

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Dimensions variable

Ahyeon Ryu

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About

Royal College of Art

Ahyeon Ryu

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Seoul Foundation for Art and Culture

Social

About

Royal College of Art