Harper’s is pleased to announce Good Things Take Time, Chicago-based artist Dabin Ahn’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. In this presentation of new oil paintings, Ahn renders traditional Korean vessels to conjure liminal space. The exhibition opens on Thursday, October 24, 6–8pm, with a reception attended by the artist.
Across this meditative series, Ahn captures the poetics emanating from classic Korean vessels with vigorous precision. The artist projects the intangible realm onto the material world with these objects, which he sometimes presents in fragments. Casting them in extraordinary light, Ahn gestures towards the imperceptible terrains of memory, emotion, and transition. The paintings that comprise Good Things Take Time are arresting yet melancholic portraits of ephemerality.
To evoke a wistful mood, the artist blends gradient dark hues with flecks of warm light, sometimes projected by smoldering candles and buzzing lantern flies. Such is the case in Constellation (Little Dipper). In this introspective work, fireflies float around the glossy exterior of a white ceramic vase adorned with delicate cobalt flora. This stately object stands sullenly amidst a sea of chilling blue pigment, but the negative space does not appear devoid of affect. Speckled with the insects’ golden fluorescence, it instead appears to summon the presence of transient spirits and untold secrets.
In works like Symbiosis, Ahn leaves the viewer with even more room for imagination through his use of errant light sources and sculptural frames. In this luminous painting, Ahn slices into the exterior of a wooden frame to reveal a rounded channel of bare canvas. The artist frequently invokes this practice throughout the exhibition: manipulating the threshold between painting and sculpture, he floods these exposed edges with beaming stretches of light. In this work, a rose buds from the shining expanse; it’s accompanied by coiling greenery that reaches for a shard of porcelain at the center of the composition. This exquisite fragment is bejeweled with ruby-toned ornamentation and attached to a thin rod that descends into an orb of misting light. As the two radiant pools of light intermingle, they open up worlds of possibility and inquiry, as if portals of rumination.
Ahn’s paint application is distinctively metered throughout: the artist opts for neat lines and smooth planes of color and shadow, resulting in hypnotically minimalist still life paintings. In these still lifes, however, Ahn favors the spatial dynamics not literally imaged in the motionless scenes. Good Things Take Time is an ode to the figurative architectures of liminality: across these pensive works, Ahn reckons with the capricious aesthetics of impermanence.
Dabin Ahn (b. 1988, Seoul, South Korea) received a BFA and MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Recently, his work has been the subject of presentations at 1969, New York (2024); OCHI, Los Angeles (2023); Shatto Gallery, Los Angeles (2022); Selenas Mountain, Ridgewood, NY (2021); Chicago Manual Style, Chicago (2020); and Andrew Bae Gallery, Chicago (2018). In addition, Ahn has contributed work to group exhibitions at Make Room, Los Angeles (2024); Harper’s, East Hampton (2024); Marvin Gardens, Ridgewood (2023); The Hole, Los Angeles (2023); Mindy Solomon Gallery, Miami (2022); and The Green Gallery, Milwaukee (2020), among other institutions. His work has been featured in publications, including Chicago Magazine, Hypebeast, and Chicago Gallery News. Ahn lives and works in Chicago.