Fantastic Lonely-Heart: Hyong Nam Ahn

“The ultimate message of Ahn’s work is the balance of nature possessed by human beings and the development of advanced forms of materiality that occupy our living environment.”

Hyong Nam Ahn, Fantastic Lonely Heart, Installation View, dimensions variable.  Courtesy of the LAB Gallery and the artist.

Fantastic Lonely-Heart: Hyong Nam Ahn
Soojung Hyun

The starting point of art is the resistance of death and time. Artists pursue possibilities to overcome and transcend the limitation of time in their works.

Hyong Nam Ahn’s installation, “Fantastic Lonely- Heart,” implies the search for the limitation of time. This work is a simply composed sculpture and a kind of site-specific installation using eclectic materials with neon. The central image in Ahn’s work represents a human being, constructed modestly, using cut and carved metal wires and neon lights that include white and blue luminous lights to express strong diagonal lines. The structure is designed in relation to the interior space of the Lab gallery at the corner of Lexington Avenue and 47th Street in midtown Manhattan.
 
Hyong Nam Ahn has lived and worked in the United States since 1973. He holds a BFA (1978) in Painting & Experimental Art and an MFA (1980) in Sculpture with Kinetics from School of the Art Institute of Chicago. A recipient of several awards, he works as a sculptor and installation artist.  Although the materials in Ahn’s work, such as neon and metal wires, look similar to decorative elements of commercial spaces employed in the vicinity of Lexington Avenue, the image of his work appears beyond any standard form of illumination. Rather his work meets our inner intuition and stimulates our spiritual pleasure. As viewers stand in front of his work, they are reading a message that speaks to the interrelated meanings of time. The light cast in the space constitutes an allegory regarding the alienation of human beings and their resistance to time. Light is as magical as it is transcendent.  It reads as a sign of hope, longing, and fulfillment. As an internal metaphor, the light of Ahn’s work refers to a state of consciousness or an imaginative process. As light exists even where things are not seen in the shadow or darkness, the light in his work reaches out to the synchronicity of relative time and space.

Hyong Nam Ahn, Fantastic Lonely Heart, Installation View, dimensions variable.  Courtesy of the LAB Gallery and the artist.

There are special sensitivities, understood by Koreans, which amplify the energy (qi) within the gallery place. The work of Ahn comes from the artist’s own sentiments and outlook on the world. We meet the essence of the artist’s action and individual existence as the traces of physical labor. The ultimate message of Ahn’s work is the balance of nature possessed by human beings and the development of advanced forms of materiality that occupy our living environment. This suggests a connection to the humanist philosophy of Ortega y Gasset who often spoke of the conflicts intrinsic to modernity in his book “The Dehumanization of Art” (1925).  Therein, he made a critical point related to the rapid spread of industrialization and its impact, specifically the increasing disappearance of human values.  Ortega emphasized the importance of maintaining an equal balance between spiritual and material realities.  Although several decades apart, Hyong Nam Ahn and Ortega y Gasset share a similar line of thought. Ahn’s complex manipulation of light symbolizes the arduous aspects of the human condition earlier addressed in the writings of the great Spanish philosopher. His work gives us a message of healing at the center of the civilized world.

*** “Fantastic Lonely Heart” will be on view at the LAB Gallery from December 2, 2011- January 6, 2012.  LAB Gallery is located at 501 Lexington Avenue  New York, NY 10017.
 

*** This article was published by NY Arts Magazine, 2011. NY Arts Magazine is published by Abraham Lubelski. Sponsored by Broadway Gallery, NYC and World Art Media.