Jiwon Rhie: Off Leash

NEW YORK, July 24, 2023 — ACOMPI and P.A.D. are thrilled to present Jiwon Rhie’s Off Leash, a one-day installation of more than twenty animatronic Flower Dog sculptures, unleashed across SoHo.  Stopping visitors and passersby in their tracks, Rhie’s collection of animated robotic dogs are adorned with lush arrangements of artificial, mass-produced flowers. The brightly-colored creatures bark, waddle, scamper, and collide within their waggish corral across astroturf lawns in a joyous display of absurdity. 

Rhie’s Flower Dogs epitomize cuteness. Their high-pitched noises, tiny scale, and frivolous movements render them powerless with the marked longing to be loved.  As scholar Sianne Ngai notes, “...the experience of cute depends entirely on the subject’s affective response to an imbalance of power between herself and the object.”* The floral dogs’ desirous position, as objects of our affection, beguile us. 

Rhie’s ongoing playful yet personal exploration of visual and material culture, tied to her own multicultural experience, is exemplified in the materials of each blossoming canine sculpture. The kinetic works nod to the same inexpensive, animatronic dog toys found yipping and gyrating around Lower Manhattan souvenir shops. They also resonate with the overlooked artificial flowers found at bargain stores across the city. In their material DNA, the sculptures further demonstrate the misalignment of commercial value and emotional resonance. 

(づ｡◕⩊◕｡)づ ✿︎૮₍ ´• ˕ • ₎ა ✿

Rhie deploys paralanguage—the components of language besides words, such as intonation, speed, gestures, and facial expression—throughout her work, here through the animals’ spatial and sonic utterances. At 5 p.m., poet Izzy Casey will give voice to parallel themes of containment, collectivity, and individualization through a reading of select original poems with dog motifs.  

It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

*Sianne Ngai, Our Aesthetic Categories: zany, cute, interesting (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015), 54.