Ayoung Kim: Syntax and Sorcery

Ayoung Kim crosses the boundaries of mediums such as video, sound, performance, VR, novel, and text and creates multi-dimensional and fluid narratives through speculative narrative/fiction-making, narratology, worldbuilding, and mythmaking. Her works, which go beyond the existing visual aesthetics created with her singular artistic approach and imagination, have been showcased at major international biennales and domestic/foreign institutions such as Venice Biennale, Asian Art Biennale, Gwangju Biennale, Busan Biennale, Palais de Tokyo, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, and Leeum Samsung Museum of Art. 

Ayoung Kim’s solo exhibition, Syntax and Sorcery, tells the story of a female delivery rider named Ernst Mo (an anagram of “monster”). Ernst Mo lives in Seoul, a fictional city postulated between techno-orientalism and Asian futurism, working as a rider (so-called “Dancer”) for a powerful delivery platform called Delivery Dancer. The god-like Dancemaster, an AI algorithm system that records, manages, and supervises the Dancers’ movement and loyalty, contracts, and distorts space and time like it is using Chukjibeop (a magical method of contracting space), enabling Dancers to conduct delivery as fast as light. Dancemaster’s navigation system calculates the shortest distance from the starting point to the destination, informing the Dancers of the straight path embroidered in the city. Incessant delivery calls and the tentacles of infinitely generated delivery paths induce a labyrinthine delirium. Following the commands of the app device that transmits the Dancemaster’s instruction, the Dancers “dance” non-stop through areas A, B, C, D, and E of the city as if they were dancing. The identity of what Ernst Mo delivers remains ambiguous. From one day on, Ernst Mo arrives in another possible world, perfectly identical to her own. There, she encounters En Storm (another anagram of “monster”), a counterpart, a ghostly entity that perfectly resembles herself. Each time they meet, space-time becomes heavier, and time flows slowly. Ernst Mo, a former Ghost Dancer, seeks counseling to make a way out of this situation and to avoid En Storm, but fate keeps bringing them together. Soon, Ernst Mo receives the penalty fatal for her career as a Dancer, and… 

Ayoung Kim tells the story of the “truth” behind what we believe to be the “fact” through a journey of constant migration and overthrow. In the midst of a global crisis that has overturned our faith in facts and made the future unpredictable, Ayoung Kim’s work stimulates our speculative imagination and provides an opportunity to face the missing and forgotten ‘truth’ of this world. Ayoung Kim’s solo exhibition, Syntax and Sorcery, explores the emigration of contemporary subjects governed by app algorithms and whose digital footprints are being collected. It is a story of magical beings who meet upon the collision of various worlds that transcend syntactic boundaries. Imagine what the “I” of another world will be like, born from the possibility of the existence of other countless possible worlds that started with an “I.” 

Project Managers Junyoung Lee, Yoojin Jang Delivery Riding Advisor Yiseul An Physics Advisor Mankeun Jeong Mathematics Advisor Seoyeon Kim Bike Riding Advisors 1172, Sunah Jung, Chaerin Shin, Seo Hyun Yoo Platform Labor Advisor Achim Koh Space Design, Production Support Johoon Choi Metal Objects 3D Drawing and Modelling Kyounghyun Yoon Metal Objects Production Jae Hyun Kim (STUDIO JHK) Character Illustration Collaboration 1172 Costume Design KIMJISOON 

Support: Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture. Further information / press contact: ms.kim [​at​] galleryhyundai.com.