Chul Hyun Ahn
Chul Hyun Ahn is a South Korean artist who works primarily with light. Description. Ahn is a member of a group of young light artists including Olafur Eliasson, Ivan Navarro, Spencer Finch, and Leo Villareal. Ahn creates meditations on zen notions of the infinite and the void, which distinguishes Ahn's oeuvre from other artists working with light. Ahn's multiple on-going sculpture series including "Forked Series" and "Tunnel Series" systematically explore the limitations of space and optics. Hilarie M. Sheets, contributing editor of "ARTnews" who also writes regularly for "The New York Times", "Art in  America", and "Art + Auction", said his work is "At once thrilling and ominous, it suggests a rabbit hole to another world—underwater, outer space, afterlife—or journey to the unknown, the kind of leap of faith involved in the artist’s own passage to an unfamiliar country and language." As a pillar in the resurgence of light art, "Ahn creates sculptures utilizing light, color and illusion as physical representations of his investigation of infinite space." Ahn lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland, where he is represented by C. Grimaldis Gallery. Biography. Chul Hyun Ahn was born in Busan, South  Korea. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Chugye University for the Arts in Seoul. In 1997 he moved to the United States and received a Master of Fine Arts from the Mount Royal School at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore in 2002. Mr. Grimaldis first saw Ahn's work at his 2002 MFA thesis exhibition at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Soon after, he had his first exhibition with C. Grimaldis Gallery in the winter of 2003 in a solo exhibition titled "Infinity - Emptiness" which featured six light sculptures. Since 2003 Chul Hyun  Ahn has exhibited extensively nationally and internationally, and his work can be found in numerous important private and public collections. In a review of Ahn's 2008 C. Grimaldis Gallery solo exhibition, "Phenomena: Visual Echo" art critic Cara Ober wrote: "What does infinity look like? Chul Hyun Ahn's show of thirteen mirrored light boxes (all 2008) answered this question over and over, in subtly different ways. The constructions of plywood and fluorescent light with exposed electrical cords unavoidably recall Donald Judd and Dan Flavin, but Ahn uses these industrial materials to a different end. Rather than clarifying visual phenomena  without artifice, Ahn seeks to mystify." Selected exhibitions. 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 1999 1996