“Flowers and Sausages” (1995) is one of Ahn’s stilllife paintings of the 1990s. Breaking from the dark moods and serious themes observed in his previous works, this painting features light subject matter in bright colors. The primary hues are used as a tool for play in his pictorial space. This still-life is filled with kitsch elements such as a table depicted using inverse perspective, sausages painted in hot pink, and sensually red flowers in contrast with the complementary blackish blue vase. Overall, the work
seems to be an outburst of the painter’s desires that are usually hidden in his criticism of reality. Despite all these elements, however, the painting still seems artificial and planar, rather than exuding naturalistic vitality, which may make the viewer feel uncomfortable. Through this still-life work, which approaches the obscene, Ahn transgresses the boundaries of moral taboo, paradoxically revealing its ugliness.
Ahn Chang-hong (b. 1953) graduated from Dong-A High School in 1973. He held several solo exhibitions at multiple venues including Gallery SPACE in 1981; Han River Art Museum in 1986; Ondara Museum of Art in 1989; Kumho Museum of Art in 1993; Savina Museum of Contemporary Art in 1999; Gallery SPACE in 2004; “An Inconvenient Truth” at Gana Art Center in 2011; “Discovery” at Alternative Space Loop in 2013; and “The Age of Barbarism” at Arario Gallery in 2015. He also participated in various group
exhibitions including “Duo Exhibition: Ahn Chang-hong and Jung Bocsu” at Gallery Hyundai in 1976; “Situation and Perceptual Painting” at Gallery Hyundai in 1982; “The 1st Zeitgeist” at The Third Museum in 1983; “4th Reality and Utterance Group Members’ Exhibition” at Kwanhoon Gallery in 1983; “Anti-Torture” at Geurimmadang Min in 1987; “The Status of Korean Art”
at Han River Art Museum in 1988; “15 Years of Minjung Art: 1980-1994” at National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea, currently MMCA, in 1994; “Resisting Translation” at Total Museum of Contemporary Art in 2005; “Korean Rhapsody: A Montage of History and Memory” at Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art in 2011; and “The Veiled Landscape” at Buk Seoul Museum of Art in 2018. He is the recipient of the Special Prize of Judge in the Cagnes International Fine Art Competition in 1989; the 10th Bongseng Cultural Award
in 2000; the 1st Buil Art Award in 2001; the 10th LEE IN SUNG Art Prize in 2009; and the 25th Lee Joong Sup Art Award in 2013.
Ahn Chang-hong, nicknamed “The Minority Artist,” has explored his distinctive method of expression to produce paintings that pierce through and criticize the world since the 1970s. While his early work was focused on portraits, he garnered widespread recognition through his “Family Photograph” series, which was created between 1979 and 1982. In this series, comprising reproductions of old family photographs on canvas, people are depicted allegorically with their eye sockets empty or entirely missing in a gruesome scene. From the mid-1980s, he joined the artists’ group Reality and Utterance and began to create more socio-critical works such as the “War” series. Up to this period, Ahn’s art had been characterized as narrational and
complex, in contrast to his works of the 1990s, which were simpler and more symbolic. In the 2000s, his leitmotif changed from civilization to nature, and in the late 2000s, he turned his gaze to people around him and produced nude paintings of ordinary people. Dealing with diverse subject matter, his works are interpreted as expressions of human despair and suffering through
allegories.
