Ahyeon Ryu, White Mirror: Prequel Version, 2020, Performance, rooster, silicon body suit, CCTVs, beam projector, wire mesh, cloth,, Dimensions variable ©Ahyeon Ryu

Ahyeon Ryu explores how an individual within post-Internet society moves and transforms in physical space according to certain rituals. That is, rather than producing a static artwork, he attempts to visualize political forces through the fluid images of a “portal,” moving across individual “units.” This can be understood as the materialization of Internet platforms closely tied to capitalism, through which the artist expects viewers to perceive with their skin what had previously been measured only by the hair’s breadth.

White Mirror is composed of two levels. The first begins as the audience encounters a four-dimensional space unfairly flattened into unconscious pixels. From the outset, they have organized their stance toward four-dimensional virtual space through various online video platforms. Their position, therefore, presupposes voyeurism and situates them in a so-called “masculine” vantage point. This stage is so naturalized and effortless that it seduces them into believing they themselves have chosen it. Yet the virtual image on the screen, breathing directly before their eyes, will mercilessly strip them of the control they thought they possessed as uncanny authority. When they realize that the monitor image is a real presence, sharing the same space with them, they will grope to confirm again with their eyes what their senses had already perceived as aura. This entire process can be seen as the analogization (materialization) of the political forces of the portal that had previously eluded capture.

The second level unfolds within the “virtual space” that has been named—the facing white cube. This white cube is a virtual space driven entirely by capital and can be likened to the studio of a streamer or creator. Within this space, the individual is thoroughly memefied, becoming an avatar for the real world beyond the camera and screen. This avatar takes the form of a voluntarily exposed object, with the exterior and interior of a “real doll” overturned and laid bare.


Ahyeon Ryu, White Mirror, 2019, Performance, silicon body suit, CCTVs, monitors, fake walls, Dimensions variable ©Ahyeon Ryu

White Mirror: Prequel Version becomes an expanded experiment on this second level. Whereas in the earlier work White Mirror(2019), the avatar secretly observed the audience and moved according to their commands in the form of an Internet streaming broadcast, the new work adopts a somewhat static four-dimensional platform where gaze and information flow entirely in one direction. In this piece, the audience is bound so completely that they can no longer rationalize their actions by pretending they were never the agents of objectification in the first place.

The avatar is positioned “prior” to the state of having already become an object through interaction with the audience; in this way, it enacts various painterly gestures before losing subjectivity both self-imposed and externally imposed. With its closed-circuit gaze, White Mirror: Prequel Version visualizes the spaces in between these multiple personal layers. Through this platform, the audience observes the amorphous movements of a single independent unit in a unilateral, “hidden camera” perspective.

The pet, separated from the avatar, functions as the subset of consciousness inherent in the avatar. It stitches together the layers by marking empty spaces with dots. The pet presents interaction with the avatar and itself stands as a stolen view of an individual, positioned also as a spokesperson for the core. To those who will infiltrate the body like a virus, the artist hopes they will successfully perceive the Informel “dance” of these two entities through the transmission of image-saliva.

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