Time: December 2nd 2011-January 6th 2012
Place: The LAB (for installation + performance art)
Opening: Tuesday, December 6th 2011 6:00-8:00 p.m.
Curator: Soojung Hyun
Hyong Nam Ahn’s installation, “Fantastic Lonely- Heart,” 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 that includes 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 Forty-seventh Street in midtown Manhattan.
Although the materials in Ahn’s work, such 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. The light exposed in the space constitutes an allegory on 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.
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. Ahn’s complex manipulation of light symbolizes the arduous aspects of the human condition. His work gives us a message of healing at the center of the civilized world.
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.
