Installation view of 《An Ordinary Man》 © Museumhead
Museumhead presents 《An Ordinary Man》, a solo exhibition by GWON
Dong-hyun, as its first program of 2026, on view through April 18.
The exhibition title points to the image of
an “ordinary man” that we might easily assume we recognize. Yet, defining its
contours is far from simple. Amid so-called “gender conflict” and the
phenomenon of idaenam (young men in their twenties), perceptions of what it
means to be a man in contemporary Korea are often shaped by misunderstanding
and fear. Can the figure of today’s man be represented? And if so, in what form
might it appear?
Installation view of 《An Ordinary Man》 © Museumhead
GWON has long collected a wide range of
imagery centered on the keyword of “masculinity.” This spans from the idealized
bodies of ancient Greek sculpture to the degraded, ridiculed figures
circulating in internet memes, as well as exaggerated and grotesquely distorted
forms.
Through the artist’s hand, figures that
both reproduce—and fail to reproduce—masculinity are constructed and
dismantled. Paradoxically, the exhibition is sustained precisely by these
bodies.
Installation view of 《An Ordinary Man》 © Museumhead
《An Ordinary Man》
gathers the residual and excessive faces and bodies of our time by enlarging or
reducing an arbitrary—rather than representative—figure of “a man.” Through
this single metaphor, a figure that stands in for the present, the exhibition
invites us to closely examine these faces and bodies.
