​Jisan Ahn  안지산

Burn Your Heart (2024)
Ahn constantly explores the feelings of anxiety and desire that lurk within human beings and projects them into specific situations that he sets up. The artist, who has been focusing on natural landscapes such as clouds, rocky mountains and snowstorms for a while, brings urban people to the fore in this exhibition. These are people who live in a world without hope, holding on to their charred bodies and exhausted hearts under the shadow of various desires. They are in an ambiguous situation where they do not know whether they are enduring pain in order to live, falling and breaking again and again, or, on the contrary, living in order to gain pain. The black and dark background, the face covered by a mask and artificial wig, a broken guitar, a hand clutching a withered flower, and the shape of a snake with its body coiled slowly reveal the latent anxiety and fear of modern people. As those involved in the incident or those around them, the viewer will be able to relate to the emotions and situations of the figures in the work and have the opportunity to reflect on the reality of constantly trying and striving to find and hold on to something, but ending up trapped in the shackles of life.

 

Hills At Night (2022 ~ )

This is part of the Stone Mountain series presented at the 2022 solo exhibition in Busan. It is a stormy landscape painting created through a process of deconstructing and recombining forms drawn from images of stone mountains and stones personally collected by the artist.

 

Storm Is Coming (2021~2022)

In the exhibition “Storm is Coming”, the special setting the artist bestows is the ‘storm’. The artist portrays or assumes the imminent approach of the storm or depicts a situation set amidst the storm, and the clouds, and stone mountain as well as the figure Mary represented by the artist expresses human being’s innate anxiety. Rather than solely concentrating on the description of the subjects, the artist focuses on depicting a specific setting and the emotions that arise from the situations the subjects are placed. The artist’s works continuously entail such emotions in his paintings but whereas the previous works depicted mostly enclosed spaces, the new works of this exhibition emphasize the expression of the emotions of the subjects on a wide open space.

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Everday ; After storm (2020)

What awaits us when the storm dies down? Chaos, from which people take shelter underground, in a metro station. Damage, as we can see by a tree whose broken branches are lying in front of a store window or a bird that has lost its wings. However, decay does not exclude beauty; it even offers room for an aesthetic we previously took for granted. Says Jisan, ‘What has been damaged can still – or even because of that – shine. That’s also a part of life. After a period of being housebound, it’s suddenly special to eat an ice cream outdoors. Little moments of happiness like that are a new form of romanticism.’

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Cut-out(2018)

While Jisan Ahn has been expressing the senses of loss and helplessness as he was caught by the images of extinction that 'fall and disappear,' he now eases the density of the process of looking into the subjects of resistance or such situation.  The desire to 'become light' manifests as a way of relieving the spatial depth and the sense of weight of the depicted subjects. These are materialized in a series of actions of ' cutting off, traces of such an action, what has been intended to be cut off, and things that are cut off in the end mutually establish relations.

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​Untitled(2017 ~)

Abandoned ideas

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fly-er(2016)

The exhibition is entitled <fly-er>. It evovles around the beings that fall and disappear from their places, the traces that are left in their absence, and the sense of fundamental loss and inquietude. Ahn's <fly-er> is an attempt to approach those forms that cannot be captured.                                                                                     

                                                                                                                                                     - Ahn, Soyeon

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Pause & Gesture (2015~ )

.....Ahn reveals his own artistic ideology by re-enacting Bas Jan Ader's <I'm too sad to tell you, 1971> in <43 90, 2015>, works created under repeated and repetitive motions, reflecting on the fate of the artist in which he must worry constantly and endure painful times. In his new works Ahn presents gestures containing the inner -self of the artist quietly expressed without the need for extemporary expression by brightening the dark space and placing himself in the space.....

 

 

The Hunt ( 2014 )

This project is called ‘Hunting the rabbit.’ It invokes the spirit of Joseph Beuys, who – in a 1965 performance – explained pictures to a dead hare. In a self-reflexive turn I pose a fundamental question: are we looking at a rabbit, an object or a painting? And would we rather be talking to a rabbit than about it? I made several paintings which give a vivid description of the hunting scene, without the presence of rabbits.

 

 

White Night -  Black Variation ( 2013 ~ Current )

....Jisan Ahn chose to experiment with varous vibes of black instead making an aggressive announcement to use it vigorously. Works primarily done in black drive the artist to exclude a great deal of content and Ahn described the darkness of black in his work notes as follows. "Darkness makes my thoughts and feelings clearer. Once darkness makes all the complications disappear, my senses become lucid and alive at once. In the darkness of the night I find the time in which life and death coexists." The artist's black withdraws into his inner self.....

                                            

                       

 

Shelter  ( 2011 ~ Current )

These uncanny dark rooms can be associated with so many things that they dimly remind each and every one of us of something. The vague positioning of objects and figures and the distance that is created when viewing them are linked to traumatic experiences that leave me speechless, experiences of loneliness and hopelessness.

 

 

Unfinished Story  ( 2012 ~ 2013 )

'We want to believe we are safe, I want to evoke anxiety.'

 

 

Piercing Lap  ( 2010 ~ 2011 )

These portraits inspired by comedy TV programs.

I pay attention to reaction of viewers who are happy when famous stars or well known people's faces became ugly or bizarre.

 

 

Punishment  ( 2009 ~ 2010 )

These paintings are the complexity of personal experiences, sudden political changes, and historical source materials that present spaces and figures as set pieces symbolizing media-dominated society. Even so, I construct settings for my collective memory.