Dabin Ahn

1969 is pleased to present Dabin Ahn: Silent Whisper, his first solo exhibition In New York City.

The figures in Silent Whisper emerge from an inky twilight mist. Some have stepped out of the looking-glass worlds of illustrated Goryeo pottery, their porcelain skin glinting under artificial moonlight or in the soft candlelight of intimate offscreen moments. Others remain trapped in the convex surfaces of centuries-old urns and vases. Part celadon, part celluloid, they reach through the strata of time and layers of mimetic artifice to communicate their emotional truths.

What is real and what is fictive? From the shadows dancing on Plato’s cave to the products of CGI and deepfake technologies today, the history of human visual culture has long been haunted by the specter of simulacra, which disturbs and fascinates in equal measure. Ahn is a contemporary master of the trompe l’oeil, well known for creating multilayered illusions that collapse the boundaries between reality and representation. Each of his ten new paintings is its own phantasmic mise-en-scène, a startling, seductive world-within-a-world. At the same time, Ahn invents playful ways to consciously pierce the veil of illusion, as when he paints on the sides of his canvases, thereby affirming the material truth of paintings as objects.

A philosophical meditation on the nature of representation, Silent Whisper also explores real human emotions. Inspired in part by Shakespearean soliloquies and similar moments in cinema when actors break the fourth wall to communicate their innermost thoughts directly to an audience, Ahn says his new works are “charged with intimate feelings.” There is an inherently voyeuristic quality to soliloquies, the artist notes, as if one were “to accidentally witness someone sobbing, a couple’s first kiss or a break up—all these moments where the protagonist should really be left alone or granted privacy.” This rare window into the private lives of others can also often be healing. We understand our own emotions better by experiencing them vicariously through characters in films or narrative paintings. In this way, Ahn hopes Silent Whisper will act as a series of timed-release pills whose therapeutic benefits are obtained through long contemplation.

Dabin Ahn (b. 1988, Seoul, Korea) received his BFA (2016) and MFA (2020) in painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Ahn’s work has been exhibited at venues including The Green Gallery in Milwaukee, WI; Edgewood College Gallery in Madison, WI; Mindy Solomon in Miami, FL; Hyde Park Art Center, Research House for Asian Art, and Artruss in Chicago, IL; The Hole and Shatto Gallery in Los Angeles, CA; Marvin Gardens, Selenas Mountain, and Long Story Short in New York, NY. Most recently, his work was showcased on Platform (David Zwirner Gallery) and exhibited in a solo presentation at Ochi Gallery (Los Angeles) in December 2023. Ahn’s first solo exhibition in New York City, Dabin Ahn: Silent Whisper, opens in March of 2024 at 1969 Gallery in Tribeca. 1969 Gallery will also be presenting work from Ahn at CAN, Ibiza Art Fair in 2024. Ahn currently lives and works in Chicago, IL.