Welcome Home
by Soyoung Shin
April 20 - May 25, 2019
Opening Reception
April 20, 2019
6 - 9 pm
Happy Hour + Twilight Market
May 23, 2019
6 -8pm
AA|LA is pleased to present Welcome Home, a multifaceted immersive retail experience by Soyoung Shin, showcasing the work of Akina Cox, Yasmine Diaz, Malisa Humphrey, laub, Charles Mathis, Liz Nurenberg, Michael Parker, Wayne Perry, Jackie Rines, Nick Rodrigues, Semi-Tropic Spiritualists, Signomi Design, and Victoria Tao. Welcome Home examines the performative transactions of retail spaces as well as the collective manifestation of a home store through critical practice. Shin’s functioning design showroom reconsiders lines of art, performativity, and commerce.
Over the course of Shin’s exhibition, AA|LA Gallery will be acting as Welcome Home, a “new” and airy Melrose design showroom. In conjunction, Shin, gallery owner, and employees will serve as retail staff, executing the inherently capitalistic ideals of a store. The items of furniture and décor in Welcome Home imbue the space with market authenticity and are displayed to facilitate sales.
Within Shin’s performative storefront are real objects evoking beauty, utility, and conceptualism. Welcome Home is furnished with functional yet unconventional commodities such as a rocking chair made of rocks, a divination coffee table offering guidance for enlightenment, a tête-à-tête kissing bench, and a shelving unit with pillars of woven bronze.
Alongside these pieces of furniture, are equally surprising elements of décor: massive ceramic curtains conceal the windows; porcelain melon lamps illuminate the space; a green glass cactus opposes another succulent made of lumbering steel; the walls are adorned with collages featuring alluring domestic spaces oblivious of ensuing violence.
The artwork in the exhibition and the newly designed retail space will be showcased in a soap opera, also titled Welcome Home.Proposing an investigation of reality in the greater scheme of capitalism and performance, episodes will be broadcast on AA|LA’s social media platforms accompanied by original scores by Anthony Bodlović, Noah Harmon,and Aerienne Russell.The four P’s of marketing –– place, production, product, and price –– will serve as guiding themes within the scripted acts, temporally marking the stages of the exhibition and leading the viewer through a narrative vision of Welcome Home.
Soyoung Shin is a multidisciplinary artist interested in the performativity of human behavior. Working primarily in textiles and performance Shin turns a critical and lighthearted lens towards the unspoken terms of engagement in American society. She enjoys presenting her work using alternative formats in alternative venues. Ask her about the time she dressed as a whale inside a bouncy castle at the park! Her work has been presented by The Huntington Library, The Women’s Center for Creative Work, Current: LA Public Art Biennial, KCHUNG, ACRE Projects, The Alice, Yellow Fish Epic Durational Performance Festival, and The Armory.