AHN Jisan

AHN Jisan (b.1979) works with traditional canvas painting, a relatively marginalized medium in contemporary art. His works depict reality, but one that is strangely misaligned or distorted. The depiction of obscure images adds visual tension, and these subjects, which have slipped out from reality, project an even greater uneasiness that brings out their innate anxiety. Upon confronting his work, there is an instant sense of discomfort. The emotional tension and gloominess are amplified by accentuating the material properties and mounting thick, expressive layers of paint onto the canvas. AHN's intention to express the subject in its raw visual state brings out the absorbed emotions created and embedded within it. These improvised animalistic expressions are possible through a thorough study and modeling process. The substantiality of the objects is neither constructed nor reconstructed but is, in fact, a realization of experienced, felt, and penetrated emotions. Rather than portraying the subject of conceptual representation through obvious imagery, the artist expresses the reality and emotional experience of the subject through intuition and empathy.

AHN Jisan has held solo exhibitions at Arario Gallery Seoul (Seoul, Korea) in 2021; Galerie Bart (Amsterdam, Netherlands) in 2020 and 2015-2014; and Zaha Museum (Seoul, Korea) and Hapjungjigu (Seoul, Korea) in 2017. He has also participated in group exhibitions at Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art (Gyeonggi-do, Korea) and MMCA, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Seoul, Korea) in 2020; Savina Museum (Seoul, Korea) in 2019; Kunsthalle Münster (Münster, Germany) in 2018; Daegu Art Museum (Daegu, Korea) in 2017; ARKO Art Center (Seoul, Korea); and Gallery LUMC (Leiden, Netherlands) in 2016. He participated in a residency at Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten (Amsterdam, Netherlands) in 2013-2014, and was awarded the “Buning Brongers Prijzen” in 2014.