Experts define the psyche as a combination of both conscious and unconscious material, which fluidly combine to compose our sense of self and the reality around us. Artist Dabin Ahn’s compositions embody this process: the psychological and emotional interior emerges through mixed media canvases that echo the layered, often abstract composition of subjectivity.
Ahn’s latest show, “Nocturne,” which just opened at Chicago’s DOCUMENT, marks a significant turning point in the artist’s practice. In just a few years, his work has undergone a gradual development of its figurative language, with a growing sense of world-building that now goes beyond painting as a medium. “I don’t think too much about the body or the materials and more about how to bring emotion to it,” Ahn tells the Observer, sharing how he maintains a close relationship with the body and each work, building everything carefully. “My process is very intimate. I often hold the work while I’m painting, almost like holding it. There’s a sense of intimacy from the beginning.”
Although he came from a traditional painting environment, he began to feel the pressure of oil on canvas alone. He creates his frames and panels, shapes them beyond the edge of the canvas and adds other elements that extend each composition into the visual space. “That process changed: some frames remained traditional, others extended the edges, opening the image to the outside. Little by little, the work changed visually,” recounts Ahn. Lately, the scale has become life-size—not a trifle, not a souvenir, but in keeping with real things and a living feeling.
During our conversation, Ahn reveals a key turning point—his father’s illness and death—that profoundly affected his emotional state and, consequently, his work. As often happens, grief became the initiator of artistic creation, and he began to change both visually and physically, using more experimental methods to express complex emotional states. Ahn explains: “His illness was getting worse, and that affected my practice. “The work became very testing because I was looking for ways to fully express my emotional state.”
This is reflected in the presentation of digital media, which is well integrated within the canvas itself The Four Seasonsexpanding its narrative. “Video allows me to fully express emotional situations, especially after my father’s death,” he says. “Drawing is always the medium, but I needed something more.” Showing fragments of videos recorded by the artist during three years of travel and daily life, the work plays forward and back in an endless cycle, acquiring through time and events a value beyond any illusion of a sequential ending. It’s a powerful metaphor for what it means to seize time and get through it.
Although Ahn’s work remains primarily figurative, the subconscious dimension that allows him to create a stage about the meaning of life is greatly appreciated. Part of the video seems to allow for a kind of commitment to its nonverbal flow, as Ahn pushes beyond the self-portrait, opening the work to an extended narrative space. At the same time, isolation, remnants and disruption are part of the structure of his work. Ahn’s dictionary is now one of the remnants of everyday life—pottery, stones, candles and personal effects associated with the transitory nature of everyday moments—that appear here broken or suspended. “They carry unknown histories, and that ambiguity fascinates me,” he notes, adding that he is deeply interested in how pieces survive, as artifacts found in museums.
“I’ve become very fond of breaking up and asking what ‘perfect’ means.” I relate this to life—how things age or fall apart over time,” Ahn recalls. Coming from the still life tradition, his earlier works focused on perfect, flawless objects. Now, that calm and undisturbed perfection seems like an illusion that can’t really exist, even on canvas. “Back then, my life was simple, and I hadn’t faced much disruption, but as I faced complexity, the pieces began to make sense intellectually and conceptually. They fit what I’m trying to express.”
Yet there is also an ongoing effort to reassemble these pieces into a dangerous unity. His works suggest a fragile balance, something ephemeral, always close to disintegration. Both in their structure and in their symbolic vocabulary, they recall this tradition vanitasdealing with the ephemerality and temporality that characterizes human existence. Motifs like butterflies and dimly lit white candles make this idea of ephemerality vivid. Indeed, many elements in his work are always read as intentional, without hidden symbols. “It’s the everyday things that open up the widest possible meanings,” explains Ahn.
Importantly, Ahn shows no emotions. Instead, you work at a threshold where emotions have already become a symptom. Her physical pieces, embedded within this assemblage of loose associations, serve as links between bodily sensation and symbolic form—metaphorical portals through which inner language enters.
As the title also suggests, these works often dwell in moments of transition: dusk, twilight or sunrise, a suspended atmosphere that further reinforces the mysterious symbol of impermanence. “I find time with my studio schedule—watching the sunset, then the moon rise as I work late into the night. The night provides a quiet, introspective space,” Ahn said. Each work becomes, for him, an abstract form of his studio space—his memories, his way of thinking and his surroundings. “It’s the dense stuff that makes up that experience.” Portals into the subconscious and, at the same time, your physical embodiments, shimmer momentarily in the midst of an endless flow of emotion.
Ultimately, his works come from a constant balance of control and dedication. The images come from his mind and are transferred to the canvas, where the emotional impressions find symbolic form, yet the structural and hand-made elements require careful planning and execution to blend together. “Some aspects are planned, especially the structural elements, but the majority of the process is intuitive,” he explains. “I rarely end up with something similar to my original idea, but I often choose what emerges through the process. I start by creating a canvas on my wooden surface, determine the scale first. Then I move on to layers—the background, objects, or abstraction. I control, but I also collaborate with the materials.”
Looking ahead, Ahn expresses a desire to continue to expand his artistic language by incorporating new elements while keeping painting as its core. For him, this expansion represents a form of linguistic growth, aimed at fostering a deeper connection with the audience. He says: “It’s like speaking many languages—each book expands my vocabulary. He admits he’s still processing his father’s passing and will continue to shape the work, while hoping that in time that pain may be replaced by something else.”
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