Sungsil Ryu: Return to Roots

Tiger Strikes Asteroid New York, in collaboration with the DOOSAN Art Center, is thrilled to present a solo exhibition with multimedia artist Sungsil Ryu at TSA NY from October 5 to November 3, 2024. This will be the first New York exhibition by the critically acclaimed South Korean artist. 

Sungsil Ryu’s new media works incisively delve into issues of capitalism and secular desire in contemporary Korean culture through a lens of black comedy. Working across video, installation, and performance, Ryu straddles the boundaries of contemporary art and influencer culture by planning and acting in one-person media broadcasts. The artist’s videos, marked by excessive production, crude editing, and cheap aesthetics, relentlessly reproduce the provocative grammar of one-person media, blurring the lines between reality and fiction. Through this approach, Ryu sheds light on the indiscriminate fake news and sensational marketing infiltrating platforms like YouTube and explores the gullibility of individuals ensnared by these tactics. 

In previous works, Ryu portrayed her various personas in series such as the fraudulent opinion leader 'BJ Cherry Jang,' the profit-driven fictional tourism agency 'Daewang Travel,' and 'Daewang Pet Memorial Services,' known for its short life cycle and extreme profitability. These series satirically depict how the desire for money intersects with Korea's traditional values. 

In this exhibition, Ryu commemorates the 5th anniversary of BJ Cherry Jang's death with a retrospective held in her hometown of New York. The exhibition is arranged as a pseudo-monument that allows visitors to retrace the footsteps of the deceased. The curved walls filling the exhibition space showcase BJ Cherry Jang's life achievements and major activities. Alongside previously unreleased drawings and videos, the exhibition sheds new light on BJ Cherry Jang’s unfinished project that explores the Movement to restore Korean familism, also known as "Root-Finding" in Korea where it is increasingly dominated by neoliberal social structures. 

Sungsil Ryu (b. 1993, Seoul) is an interdisciplinary artist who has exhibited her work in many museums and institutions internationally. Selected solo exhibition venues include Atelier Hermès (2022, Seoul, KR) and Post Territory Ujeongguk (2019, Seoul, KR). Ryu also has taken part in group exhibitions at various venues, including, Kunsthal Aarhus (2024, Aarhus, DK), Nam June Paik Art Center (2024, Yongin, KR) and SONGEUN Art and Cultural Foundation (2023, Seoul, KR), Singapore Art Museum (2024, Singapore, SG) and Ilmin Museum of Art (2019, Seoul, KR). Ryu was recently selected as a resident artist for the 2024 DOOSAN International Residency at ISCP. Her work is currently part of the collections at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, and the Nam June Paik Art Center.

This exhibition is part of the DOOSAN International Program, designed to expand the global reach of contemporary Korean art through international partnerships. This project follows the solo exhibition of artist Eusung Lee at Tiger Strikes Asteroid; New York in 2023. DOOSAN Art Center is one of South Korea’s foremost nonprofit institutions and has been at the forefront of promoting artistic innovation in Seoul since its establishment in 2007. DOOSAN is dedicated to nurturing artistic practice through a wide range of initiatives including a robust exhibition program in Korea; showcasing emerging Korean artists outside of the country through collaborative projects with influential institutions and experts; championing the next generation of Korean artists through the DOOSAN Yonkang Arts Awards; fostering partnerships with international residencies like ISCP; New York and incubating curators through the DOOSAN Curator Workshop, a long-running program for emerging curators. Numerous artists and curators in both the national and international art scene have been supported by and exhibited at DOOSAN in their early careers including Donghee Koo, eobchae, Heecheon Kim, Heemin Chung, Hyeree Ro, Hyungkoo Lee, Jaemin Cha, Sojung Jun, Jiwon Yu(Curator), Leeji Hong(Curator), and Suzy Park(Curator) among others.