- Gim Jungi(Art Critic)

This exhibit is the result of a meeting of literature and visual art. Writer Park Bumshin, who writes about the groove of time and finds death in life, connected with visual artist Ahn Jongyuen, who captures not only time and space but also creation and extinction in the world of light. Park Bumshin pays tribute to the things that disappear and fade away in his novel ‘Groove’, a literary document about ‘the groove of time' that comes from the human fate of life and death. This matter of time in Park Bumshin’s literature inspired an introspective motif to visual artist Ahn Jongyuen.
Ahn Jongyeun rediscovers the grand literary epic as a summarized visual language while at the same time, showcasest the variation of light and still light, a pervading theme in her artwork. In this process, the artist captures the groove of time. The work of Ahn Jongyuen is relevant because she accomplishes an in-depth relationship of the literary epic and the visual epic over existing shallow relationships. Ahn Jongyeun does not focus on describing affairs and situations from the novel, but manages to engender greater meaning from the literature, without delineating every step of Park Bumshin's epic. The artist penetrates all domains of artistic language, and unravels the novel’s story by employing minimal flat surfaces, three-dimensional structures, mixed media, installations, and figurative paintings.
The best way to discover a layer of time is by overlapping. In previous artwork, Ahn Jongyeun has often utilized strong metal mediums so that the repetitive pouring and hardening liquid epoxy has been a new medium for her. Through this repetition, the artist has given shape to a new expressive language. Ahn Jongyuen is well known for moving freely over the boundaies of medium and technique. Her strongest virtue is her dominating power over her chosen artistic medium. The artist's challenging and experimental attitude toward facing new circumstances expands her language from a fixed private language, to a flexible interactive language.
To have a deeper understanding of the art works, viewers need to keep an eye on the printed images used as backdrops. Ahn Jongyeun collected diverse sizes of three-dimensional glass structures from her experimental technique of glass casting. The glass structures have their own formative beauty. At the same time, these structures serve the role as mediators of light for light is refracted when passed through them. The result is an assortment of content from the variation and expansion of this 'light playing', and which reinforces the notion of one source multi-use. Cast glass, through the adjustment of light, mediates color and pattern. This adjusted light creates a world of fantasy that is projected into the space. The changing the light to photography and video through a succession of stages is a splendid variation for this exhibit.
The series, is an installment where shapes of light are grounded through black mirrored stainless steel, and further affirms the depth and clarity of Ahn Jongyuen’s flat art work. To prompt a reinterpretation of light, the name draws on the notion of Central Asia Ezen spirituality which the artist fuses into he art works. allows for viewers to experience the art works in an almost psychic medium by the presenting of the radiant existence of light in darkness. The series displays a unique technique developed by Ahn Jongyeun, where she has engraved shapes on heat baked colored stainless steel with an electronic hand drill and specialized bits, in order to visualize the diffusion of light through water waves and landscape scenery. Along with black mirrored and colored stainless steel, the portraits of Ahn Jongyeun and Park Bumshin, who are companions in this project, further underscores the introspection and mastery of Ahn Jongyeun’s special visual language.
Some of the works illustrate attractive fantasy through the illusion of painting. The masterpiece, , depicts scenes of a city that exists somewhere between reality and imagination. This monumental work displays a frozen ideal city, the technical process for which was the pouring and hardening of liquid epoxy after the painting was completed. In a comparative notion with the painting , people realize how much potential her paintings have, according to the variation of surface finishes. These two pieces explicitly portray situations and scenes from Park Busim’s novel as opposed to other works in the exhibition which are more general. and , canvas paintings with attached jewels and overlays of epoxy, proves that painting is still alive and well as a powerful visual language.
The most minimal works in the exhibition are the epoxy drip paintings. The layering of colors on poured epoxy surfaces establishes the notion of time layers. This superposition of materials serves as a metaphor for the groove of time that accrues layer by layer as time goes by. The resulting form is a circular shape that most simply contains all the ways of the world. The series also chooses a minimal way of connecting the literary epic with the visual epic, and again displays the clarity of Ahn Jongyeun’s work. This series is the result of repetitive layering of clear color against epoxy some of which are defined in a clear circular form, while others have color moving from strong to light. Others in the series break down line and create new forms similar to the primitive forms of life.
In the process of creating dimension from flatness, people are able to realize the depth of perception that comes from the visual sense. is a piece created by the weaving of rusty steel slabs to create a space that draws out the concept of time by transforming a flat surface into a three-dimensional structure. The artist constructed a cube oval by layering different sized circular slabs, the end result of which captures a ground of time that is connected to an eternal world, conveys characteristics of Ahn Jongyeun's language explicitly from the material property of rusty steel to space in the three-dimensional structure made from steel layers which in turn, induces an implication of time in space.
Ahn Jongyeun's art is a continuum of lighting along with steel, wood, photography, mixed media, and flat surface painting that has been further enhanced with an epoxy drip technique. She connects the high technology of lighting with the age-old craft of glasswork. The artist put LED lighting in glass she had cast and which transforms the glass shapes into convex or concave forms. This lighting technique not only provides a vivid experience of visual fantasy through the energy of the light, but also furnishes an expansion of space from the visual fantasy, and connects this expansion to be consistent with the groove of time theme. , a combination of 3D structure and video artwork, provides the opportunity to look inside of the proliferous aspects of time and space through the expansive world of the Mandala.
Ahn Jongyeun's spatial installation uses light to build an epic scale of the visual which bestows an experience of a primitive form of time. This space of light is where Ahn Jongyeun’s epic visual unfolds as magnificent scenes and circumstance. is a fantasy world of lights, which pass through various spheres of cast glass. The artist hints at matters of time, space, creation and extinction, in this space of light. It is in this world of light that the artist tenaciously penetrates through diverse courses. To Ahn Jongyeun, light accomplishes the departure and arrival of artistic language, and has a direct relationship with the spirit of the artist. Ahn Jongyeun has attempted to establish steps toward a principle where the essence of an artist as a psychic medium can be realized through light.
The world of Ahn Jongyeun lies in widely diverse fields along with categories that are closely placed with boundaries like art and technique, material and immaterial, form and idea, visual art and literature. Ahn Jongyeun is an artist who expands the domain of art by going beyond the domain. She can be likened to a messenger who connects two different fields regardless of boundaries. Ahn Jongyuen expands her way of existence and activity infinitely by locating herself in the domain of inter-art that penetrates both the art and non-art world. Interaction that transcends boundaries and which comprises the essence of life and art is the path that Ahn Jongyeun has chosen, and which she will continue to take. This essence reestablishes the status of the artist as a private doer and one who cooperates with people through interaction. Within this context, Ahn Jongyeun is an artist of integration and consilience who captures the spirit of the times and carries this conversion of structure to art.