Young-Il Ahn: Self Reflections

Young-Il Ahn was born in Gaeseong, a city now geographically located in North Korea. As a young boy, Ahn moved with his family to Horikiri, northeast of Tokyo; in 1943, the Ahn family left Japan and returned to Korea when his father, artist Seung-gak Ahn, accepted a position as an art instructor at Cheongju Teachers College. A child prodigy, Ahn won numerous prizes as a student, including national art contests in 1949 and 1954. After graduating from the highly competitive College of Fine Arts at Seoul National University and serving in the military, Ahn eventually made his way to the United States, settling in Los Angeles in 1966. In 2017–18, with the exhibition _Unexpected Light: Works by Young-Il Ahn__, Ahn_ became the first-ever Korean-American artist to be featured in a solo exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, bringing overnight acclaim to his _Water_ paintings. Ahn's work was also the subject of two solo shows at the Long Beach Museum of Art, _A Memoir of Water: Works by Young-Il Ahn_ in 2014, and _Young-Il Ahn: When Sky Meets Water_ in 2017–18. Upon his death in 2020, _ARTnews_ paid tribute to Ahn as a \"trailblazing painter of radiant abstractions.\" Ahn painted nearly 400 works inspired by the light on the Pacific Ocean in his celebrated _Water_ series, a subject which he spent over thirty years returning to and developing. The series began in 1982, when he had a life-changing experience on the water. During a day of deep-sea fishing in the Santa Monica Bay, fog enveloped his boat and distorted his ability to navigate back to land, leaving him stranded at sea. Engulfed in fog and unable to see the horizon line, Ahn found his understanding of perception forever altered, and the experience sparked a philosophical and spiritual investigation into the subtle divisions between light, space, and form. He spent much of his career attempting to capture that life-altering experience on canvas and give form to that feeling on the sea. _When I look out upon the ocean, I tremble as if I am holding part of the universe in my hand. This is why, for the past thirty years, I have ceaselessly tried, through the Water series, to put that \"tremble\" onto my canvases._ —Young-Il Ahn Memory and loss are evoked in _Memorial to September 11, 2001_, a series that Ahn painted following the tragedy of the Twin Towers falling after the terrorist attacks in New York City. A large, dense painting with an abstract grid reads as a bird's-eye view of Manhattan, and the stains and blotches of wet paint evoke the deep sadness of the tragedy of September 11th. Images of survivors fleeing the wreckage covered in thick gray ash, and of people jumping from the towers were transmitted across television screens and printed in newspapers around the world, serving as haunting artifacts of that day. The trauma, terror, and devastation of that moment are felt in Ahn's abstraction. Just as in his Water series, where he creates an evocation of the sensation, reflection, and immutable nature of water, Ahn gives form to sadness, loss, and mourning in _Memorial to Sept. 11_ (2001). The works on view at Perrotin New York present the depth and complexity of Ahn's practice, highlighting his singular approach to abstraction over a fifty-year career and celebrating his lifelong commitment to giving form to his passions, reflections, and musings. Whether the deep impression of his solo journey in a boat on the ocean, or the fragility of life on September 11th, Ahn distilled his personal experiences in his work. Seen together, these paintings showcase an artist clearly in dialogue with lineages of global abstraction, yet who developed a self-reflective form uniquely his own.