MUSEUMS
The work of renowned light artist Chul Hyun Ahn is on exhibit at the Vero Beach Museum of Art through April 30. Using lights and mirrors and ordinary
objects, Ahn creates Zen-inspired works that are windows into infinity and space, such as this work, entitled Five Squares, from 2016.
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SEASON OF THE ARTS
VBMA PHOTOS
MIRRORING AN
ILLUSION
BY CATHERINE ENNS GRIGAS
VBMA exhibit invites viewers to explore
space through their own perspectives
When Vero Beach Museum of Art’s new senior
curator, Anke Van Wagenberg, lined up one of
her favorite artists for an exhibition this fall, she
had no idea that a pandemic would shutter the
museum and change much of the way it operates.
But as it turns out, the work of the internationally-acclaimed
South Korean-born Baltimore resident Chul Hyun
Ahn could not have been a better choice for a world restricted
and changed by a pandemic.
His sculptures created with light and mirrors and other objects
offer a window into the infinite. One art critic describes
his work as, “At once thrilling and ominous, it suggests a rabbit
hole to another world — underwater, outer space, afterlife
— or a journey to the unknown, the kind of leap of faith
involved in the artist’s own passage to an unfamiliar country
and language.”
“It really is the perfect moment for this exhibition,” Van
Wagenberg says. “His works are sculptures of light and illusion.
They are thrilling, ominous and have an other worldliness
about them.”
Van Wagenberg, who came to the VBMA from the Academy
Art Museum in Easton, Maryland, became familiar with
the artist’s work through the prestigious C. Grimaldis Gallery
in Baltimore, where Ahn settled after receiving a master’s of
fine arts at the Maryland Institute College of Art.
At once sculptor, magician and engineer, Ahn creates >>