SANGHOON AHN

The artist contemplates expanding the uncertainty of painting into various situations and spaces, going between representation and abstraction, coincidence and inevitability, stimulation and acceptance.

Ahn has participated in residency programs including Nanji Art Studio of Seoul Museum of Art(Seoul, 2022), CAN Foundation Residency(Seoul, 2021), MMCA Residency Goyang (Goyang, 2020), Gyeonggi Creation Center(Ansan, 2019), Incheon Art Platform(Incheon, 2017, 2018), and Kunsthof Dahrenstedt Residency (Sachsen-Anhalt, Germany, 2015).

He was awarded the Surim Art Award(2019), Public Art New Hero(2018), and Artist of the Year(Incheon Art Platform, 2017), and has received support from Sachsen-Anhalt(Germany, 2015).

Painting Experiment

Ahn has tried murals on the walls of farm building in Kunsthof Dahrenstedt, Germany(Brushstroke 3[H, M, N]. This continues as an experiment of engaging painting and space, with the artist using multiple panels and walls, or using vinyls. He also includes narrow sides and the top of the fake wall as a material in , 2017.

Then he arrayed paintings on the vinyl and wrapped the entire exhibition hall in 《GOOD: PAINTING》, 2017,

<Art Project SUMM-ER (Islander)>, 2019, which used the area around the Gyeonggi Creative Center, and <The Face I’ve Loved All My Life>, 2023, which explored the use of the space beside the various ways of displaying.

The point is not the result of his work, but the process itself, which allows the viewer to see the events that occurred during the exposure and to imagine possible events. In the 《Everyday Project》, and , 2018, he filled the canvas everyday in an open window atelier that anyone can look into it while passing by. , 2018, a retrospective of the artist’s previous works through the act of ‘painting’ for six days at the site, and (Surim Art Center, 2019), uses murals, fake walls, and vinyl to show the process of creation and destruction simultaneously.

He experiments not only with the paintings themselves but also with the way they are presented. , 2017, allows visitors to select the title of one work among the 125 paintings and give them five minutes to see.

《My shoes are a bit more colorful》, 2018, a translucent plastic film across the center of the room to alter the way of viewing, and 《Veni, Vidi, Vici》, 2018, which displays works on the side of a narrow passageway made of fake walls erected in the hall.

Canvas Painting

Sanghoon Ahn constantly resists the interpretation of painting as having a specific meaning. To him, painting is not a representation of something, an inner abstraction, an exploration of the nature of painting, an image, the medium of painting, or anything related to discourse outside of painting. Therefore, the artist avoids contact with the outside world that the painting can relate to and erase it from the picture. Unlike recent paintings that strive to create a network of meanings, Ahn’s paintings are erased, or left in a disabled state, of any trace of reproduction, reference, or appropriation. The titles generated by chance through Google searches, do not form any relationship with the images of the works and the traces of language in the works, which have not been erased, do not function in any sense.

“Artists do not merely interpret the world to know the world; they do more than interpret: they transfigure the world to see it differently and ultimately to take possession of it on their own terms—Art is the attempt not to capture experience and give it a form but ultimately to let form itself discover experience—better yet, to let form become experience.” (Homo irrealis, Andre Aciman, 2021)

Ahn’s effort to erase meaning and representation from the painting is an effort to see beyond that. Painting in its indeterminate state is, paradoxically, a form of possibility. Ahn naturally experiments with painting forms that evolve in multiple directions, one step at a time.

Courtesy Gallery Chosun