Jaehong Ahn

<Interview> (in Korean)

예술의 도시 베를린에서 만난 사람들인터뷰 - 안재홍 작가

By Columnist Jeong-Hoon Lee, 이정훈 칼럼니스트 

Click on the link to read: http://www.theartist.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=1969

<Jae hong Ahn: 'Replaced Windows' at Articsok Gallery>

Replaced Windows

Bologna has many churches and inside are many paintings. They tell stories from the Bible and some do it better than others. Unlike museums, the pictures are usually hanging where they were first positioned, whereas with a long history of learned curators have placed their best pictures prominently, the second rate in the basement. A consensus has been reached about what is good and what is lesser or bad. Visiting the churches to look at the art makes connoisseurship interesting and pertinent; there's a Raphael here somewhere, but where? 

    The subject (what we often call content) of a painting for the church was given. Also given were other subjects that painters used, as required by the aristocracy and the merchant class, such as portraits, landscapes and still-lifes. Artists also sought to sell their products within the market structures of the time through academies, the salons, exhibitions and dealers' galleries. Until the end of the 19th century, content was limited to figures, landscapes and still-lifes. With the emergence of Modernism in the 20th century, artists began to choose their own content; the concept of the work becomes an integral part of the art and the artist is free to choose it. What one does is as important as how one does it. 

     Jae Ahn left Canada to work in Leipzig, Germany, in order to be close to the painters he admired, the so-called Leipzig Schule. This is a style born of the need of the East Germans to assert themselves in an atmosphere of victory and takeover by the West after the re-unification. It draws heavily on the traditional concerns of German painting, strong contrast of light and dark, precise linear drawing, complicated composition and dramatic emotional emphasis. Think of Dürer, Grunewald and Cranach up to Beckman and Dix. Jae Ahn has assimilated these influences as well as those of a more recent Generation.  

With his painting "The Buglers", the two roof areas  at the top set the tone where a man and a woman move in opposite directions out of a spiralling form. The red compliments the light and lime greens which emerge from the dark umbers. The content is set as much by Ahn's use and choice of colour as by the theatrical scene portrayed. Similarly with the "The Junction", the emerald green lion on white arrests the eye to focus on what he is looking at diagonally across the rectangle. This time the lower half sets the tone and we are lead to contemplate what is above. In "Privileged Infidelity" the diagonal is used to a great effect, emphasized by light tones and earth colours on a dark ground. The cart makes a strong diagonal movement made even stronger by the diamond shape above and off centre, which is dominant but takes its place within the totality of the work. "The Drain" makes its point directly with silver greys inside light and shade, subtle modelling and then a tiny patch of yellow and white. It is of course a figure. Such is my Initial take on any painting, be it old master or up to date modern. It is not unusual; painting since Delacroix has demanded to be seen first in this way, and to declare how successful it is in its totality and how good it is on first impressions. 

      While I try to explain how Ahn is visually thinking as he wrestles with the emotional content of his themes, one can Interpret these paintings according to his/her own feelings. The meaning is deliberately vague as are the titles. What distinguishes them is his desire to communicate by putting paint onto a support, oil paint on canvas. It is a language and method of making art often described these days as being out of touch and lagging behind new media. Yet it continues in our flip culture as if to challenge new media and to try harder to assert its superiority.  

Jae Ahn is rising to this challenge. He presents us with not only ponderous works of art but art which is unexpected and, above all, with aesthetic surprises. And thus, he seems to be at that point in life and career where he/she urgently demands to reconcile with his/her past. With a given opportunity to dwell and roam about in Incheon, I am intrigued to witness what unexpected visual, thematic and emotional challenges he would pose to himself this time around.   

David Evison 

Artist & professor of Universität der Künste Berlin