Ahn Jisan – Day, Night

Tomio Koyama Gallery Kyobashi is pleased to present “Day, Night,” the first solo exhibition in Japan by Korean artist Ahn Jisan, featuring a selection of his new paintings.

Ahn Jisan was born in Busan, South Korea in 1979. After graduating from the Korea National University of Arts in 2006, he studied painting at the Frank Mohr Institute in the Netherlands. From 2013, he spent two years in residence at the Rijksakademie Van Beeldende Kunsten in the Netherlands. Following solo exhibitions in the Netherlands, he returned to Seoul in 2015 and began his artistic career in South Korea. His works are held in the collections of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul (South Korea), the Daegu Art Museum (South Korea), and the Royal Academy of Art (Netherlands) among others.

Ahn Jisan’s paintings evoke an atmosphere of anxiety marked by a sensation of confinement, oppression, chaos, and fear, while his exceptional knack for composition, dramatic use of light, and meticulous yet powerful brushwork come together as a strong enticement to the viewer’s gaze.

Ahn’s personal memories of running around and playing in the Bosu-dong bookstore district of Busan as a child, the gloomy atmosphere of his father’s studio, and scenes of torture in political dramas intermingle in sensations that seem to be shared by many people. The diverse range of images that he weaves together seem to unfold on the canvas as a world of infinite depth and profundity.

Is the world truth or fiction, real or virtual, substance or illusion? What kind of truth lies within the darkness that pierces through the inner self?

The sense of reality underlying the images revealed in Ahn’s works evokes a variety of new and mysterious emotions in the viewer, while also awakening memories buried in the unconscious — memories that feel as though we had previously encountered them somewhere.

Another distinctive feature of Ahn Jisan’s creative process is the way in which he plans everything meticulously in advance, sketching ideas that come to mind with a pencil and sometimes creating partial mockups of them in his studio. Also noteworthy is the fact that many of his paintings evolved out of photographic collage drawings.

Previously, Ahn sought to express his subject matter through the more direct approach of immersing himself in the act of smearing paint on his hands and feet, and washing it off repeatedly — a practice that stemmed from a certain desire for and skepticism over the forms of things that are fading, or have already vanished. Ahn had also studied the life and work of the Dutch artist Bas Jan Ader (1942–1975), feeling a certain empathy towards works by Ader that depicted a state of perpetual falling and impending death, overlaying his own emotions and painterly annotations onto this existing video work by Ader.

The diverse range of Ahn’s preparatory processes represent an attempt to imbue the body with sensations often overlooked in two-dimensional art in a natural way, thereby broadening the range of sensations tied to the medium of painting.

A sense of anxiety eroded by circumstances lurks behind various objects, furtively revealing its presence. It is only when we confront this anxiety head-on that we can truly understand Ahn’s work.

Gallery hours 11 am – 7 pm, closed Sun, Mon, National Holidays

Exhibition Duration 25.04 – 06.06.2026

www.tomiokoyamagallery.com

Location:
Tomio Koyama Gallery Kyobashi
Toda Building 3F, 1-7-1, Kyobashi, Chuo-ku
104-0031 Tokyo
Japan