Artist as 'questioning being,' Ahn Kyu-chul provokes reflection at Kukje Gallery
Ahn Kyu-chul is an artist of questions, twisting everyday subjects into artworks that transform simple questions into reflections, provoking thought and wonder in viewers.
At the exhibition “Twelve Questions” at Kukje Gallery in Busan, three seascape paintings with their horizons tilted are hung askew on the wall, aligned to each horizon's angle, prompting the question, “Why wouldn't he have displayed the painting properly?”
Among the three paintings, the one at the center is displayed properly, but the viewer has to step onto a slanted wooden prop to adjust for the distorted sea horizon.
Other works at the exhibition include “Falling Chair - Homage to Pina,” a single-channel video documenting a performance by Ahn, who is seen constantly trying to put a chair upright each time it falls; “Aphorism in Foreign Languages,” featuring sentences written in indecipherable scripts; and “Walking Man" (2024), his first animation.
The exhibition, the artist’s first at Kukje Gallery in four years, brings together 50 of Ahn’s recently created works, offering a glimpse into the artist’s intriguing perspectives and thoughts on the world. Some of the works were shown last year at “Ahn Kyuchul: Questions―Landscape Without Horizon” at Space ISU in Seoul and “Ahn Kyuchul Multiplied” at Amado Art Space, also in Seoul.
Ahn writes every day and has published several books, such as “The Other Side of Things” in 2021, which consists of short writings on a variety of ready-made objects, sometimes wittily personified, along with drawings of the objects.
The artist begins each day by writing on paper, a practice that has become his “morning ritual,” according to the gallery. “Rather than being an eccentric or extraordinary artist, I want to see if I can become a special artist by doing what is as natural as the sun rising in the morning,” the artist once said.
Ahn studied at Seoul National University and the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart in Germany. He taught at the School of Visual Arts at Korea National University of Arts from 1997 to 2020.
“'Twelve Questions' embodies the artist’s enduring ethos -- quietly revealing the contours of Ahn’s 40-year journey as someone who has lived by questioning,” the gallery noted about the exhibition.
The show at Kukje Gallery in Busan runs through Oct. 19.
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