Artist Ahn Kyuchul (b. 1955) has been relentlessly seeking alternative prospects of contemporary art through profound examination on life and art since the mid-1980s. Acclaimed for his complex yet delicate artistic vocabulary incorporating reflections on daily life, as well as close observations of everyday objects and language, Ahn has constructed a body of work. His visual language, deeply rooted in a conceptual approach and oblique representations of reality, allows viewers to reassess the essence of human nature and objects while confronting the irrationalities and paradoxes of modern life.

Ahn Kyuchul, Scenery of Jeong-dong, 1985 ©MMCA

Ahn is known for his immersion in the conceptual nature of objects, but when he began his work in the early to mid-80s, he also produced works that reflected the reality of Korean society at the time. Entering university around the time of the Yunshin Reformation in 1972, Ahn spent his university years in a repressed atmosphere and a conservative atmosphere in which non-academic art was not recognized.

In this environment, the artist naturally developed a critical consciousness of the established art world and society and became a member of the 'Reality and Utterance' group of critics and artists who sought to reflect the socio-political reality of Korea in their art.

During the politically turbulent 1980s in South Korea, the artist created miniature works on the veranda of his home, using very simple materials to recreate real-life events. Scenery of Jeong-dong (1985) is a miniature sculpture of university students breaking through security and climbing over a fence to a building flying an American flag to protest, a scene the artist witnessed on the Deoksugung Stonewall, which he passed by every day.

Ahn's satirical series of works depicts real-life events that occurred in the political shadows of the time in small, fairytale-like sculptures.

Ahn Kyuchul, Unrighteous Brush, 1992 ©MMCA

In the mid-1980s, Ahn began creating works as "narrative sculptures" that challenged the practices of the art world and exposed the problems facing society. His work has since evolved into subverting habituated notions of everyday objects by creating objects that are located on the borderline between object and sculpture, and adding speculative language to them.

Unrighteous Brush (1992), which was exhibited in a solo exhibition during the artist's studies in Germany, is one of the works that reveals the order and contradictions behind the invisible by overturning the common sense notion of objects, which is a constant theme in Ahn's work.

By carving the word “죄 (its English equivalent would be “sin”)" into the bristles of a brush, an everyday object made by the artist himself, the work reminds us to reconsider the purpose of the brush, which is to pick up dust and dirt, and metaphorically reveals the violence and absurdity of common sense in the world through everyday objects.


Ahn Kyuchul, The Man’s Suitcase, 1993 ©Kukje Gallery

In the 1990s, while studying abroad in Germany, the artist began to intertwine drawing and text into a single work. At that time, he was introduced to the German school's critical class method of verbally explaining and asking questions about his work, which was a breakthrough for an artist who had studied within the established art world in Korea. Since then, he has been working in such a way that when he sketches an idea, he writes down the related thoughts in writing so that the writing and the painting can be connected as a single work.


Ahn Kyuchul, The Man’s Suitcase, 1993 ©Kukje Gallery

For example, The Man's Suitcase (1993), an installation consisting of eleven drawings with sketches and corresponding text and a wing-shaped suitcase sculpture, was an experimental work that used text to link fictional narratives to objects.

It is also a representative work that concentrates on the theme of 'fiction and reality' that runs through Ahn's work. Next to 11 drawings that tell the story of a wing-shaped suitcase entrusted to an unknown man, the suitcase, which is the central material of the story, is placed in front of the viewer as if it were presented as concrete evidence of the story.

The viewer is forced to consider whether or not to believe the fictional story in the face of this concrete evidence. Through this work, Ahn suggests that reality and fiction are intertwined like a web and can never be separated, and the viewer experiences the moment of intertwining and perceives the double web of meanings in our visual culture and symbols.


Ahn Kyuchul, Room With 112 Doors, 2004 ©The Hankyoreh

Since then, Ahn's work that crosses the boundaries of the genre has expanded into the realm of architecture, or space. Room With 112 Doors, presented in his solo exhibition “Forty-Nine Rooms” at Rodin Gallery in 2004, was the first step in his architectural work.

Starting with the question of how to tell universal stories related to our society within the space of an existing exhibition hall, the artist created doors that we encounter and open and close in 'real life'. Even if the viewer opens all 112 doors and enter the same room, the same room is repeated, giving the viewer the experience of tautology, where the act of opening the door becomes meaningless, and at the same time, the experience of standing on the border between openness and closure, where the viewer never knows when someone will enter the small space with doors on all sides.

Through these labyrinthine spaces, the artist conveys the story of the repetitive and boring daily life of modern people who expect a better future but are no different from yesterday, and the boundary between others and themselves in modern society in a way that the viewer can directly experience it. 

In addition, the artist has continued to work on architectural works about space and residential environments, recontextualizing objects that contain the reality of our society into works of art, such as bringing in materials that have become obsolete due to reconstruction, or building a house with door frames picked up from abandoned houses.


Ahn Kyuchul, 1,000 Scribes, 2015 ©MMCA

Selected for the Hyundai Motor Series at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea in 2015, Ahn's "Invisible Land of Love" expands on his previous works that intertwine various artistic genres and present them to the viewer as a single work, inviting reflection on life.

Conceived based on the artist's thought, "What if each work becomes a sequence and functions as a story like a literary work?", the exhibition is composed of interdisciplinary works encompassing literature, architecture, music, video, performance, and publishing that intertwine with the viewer. The title of the exhibition is a quote from a poem by the poet Mah Chonggi, which aims to reveal the absence of things in the 'here-and-now' and to reflect on their meaning.

The artist has chosen to present the exhibition not in a conceptual and complex way, but in a way that anyone can partially participate in the creation of the artwork, so that the intention of the exhibition can be easily understood through the five senses. For example, 1,000 Scribes invited over 1,000 visitors to transcribe literary works for an hour during the exhibition, and Wall of Memories was an audience-participation work in which visitors' notes were gathered to form a giant wall.

In this way, Ahn invites the audience to participate in his work, and aims to create a community of solidarity and empathy by uncovering and connecting the 'invisible' thoughts behind the images that flood our surroundings, beyond the sensory stimulation of images.

"I'm interested in making small, silly jokes with the objects and texts around me. I do this not because I am indifferent to the important things that people are preoccupied with, or because I am oblivious to the seriousness of these realities, but rather because I cannot obediently surrender to this overwhelming reality that puts our lives in such a survival-or-die situation.

I'm not against serious art, I'm not against art as a sensory spectacle, but I doubt that they really expand our thinking about other possibilities in our lives. I am against art that settles for typical and predictable reactions and solutions." (Ahn Kyuchul, All And But Nothing, Workroom, 2014, p. 331)


Artist Ahn Kyuchul ©Kukje Gallery

Ahn Kyuchul received his BFA in Sculpture from Seoul National University and worked as a journalist for Art Quarterly from 1980 through 1987. He then moved to Paris in 1987, and to Germany in 1988, graduating from the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart in 1995 after completing both undergraduate and graduate programs. From 1997 to 2020, he taught at the School of Visual Arts, Korea National University of Arts.

Major solo exhibitions include “Words Just for You” at Kukje Gallery, Seoul (2017); “Invisible Land of Love” at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul (2015); “All and but Nothing” at HITE Collection, Seoul (2014); and “Forty-Nine Rooms” at Rodin Gallery, Seoul (2004).

Ahn has also participated in numerous group exhibitions at institutions and biennales including “Variations of the Moon” at the Nam June Paik Art Center, Yongin (2014); “ROUNDTABLE: The 9th Gwangju Biennale” (2012); “Void in Korean Art” at Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul (2007); and “Parallel Life” at Frankfurter Kunstverein (2005).

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