“DOOSAN ART LAB Exhibition 2024” Installation view at DOOSAN Gallery ©DOOSAN GalleryMuseumhead presents “Outlet”, an solo exhibition by Ahyeon Ryu, on view through January 27. Ryu has been exploring the images distributed under the capitalist mechanism. In “Outlet,” Ryu transforms the exhibition space into a fictional store and visualizes the way the human body is commodified and consumed through 10 sculptures and a performance. Performances will take place every Friday from 3pm to 7pm.
The title ‘Outlet’ refers to a temporary marketplace where unsold goods are sold at a low price, and a way of consumption. As a temporarily (in)active shop, the exhibition is structured in two parts, as a “showroom” and a “fitting room”. In the showroom, which is only active for a limited time, performances are organized once a week. The gestures of the performers, who are usually stationary, are frozen in time as they are combined with the immovable sculpture and screen. The exhibition shows bodies that have been absorbed into flat images or into fashions that need to be renewed day by day. At the same time, the artist offers the paradoxical possibility of fathoming alternative models of subject in these images of the human body. In this way, the exhibition “Outlet” puts the brakes on the infinite present of commodity logic and attempts a kind of transition.
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 commercialized 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. Ryu has participated in group exhibitions at SAGA (Seoul, 2021), ARKO Art Center (Seoul, 2022), Museumhead (Seoul, 2022), Morley Gallery (London, 2023), and Staffordshire St (London, 2023).
