- Venue
- Phoenix Brighton
- Location
Even at a glance these photographs look different to the current plethora of portraits, where the subject, in their surroundings, stares out at the viewer. It must be admitted that sometimes such portraits are indistinguishable from snaps, their secrets and expertise only revealed upon closer inspection.
Jinkyan Ahn’s work is immediate whilst gently philosophical. Presented both framed on walls and in installation, the artist photographs his own parents in their apartment, showing duality and reflection, indicating the otherly layers of relationships between people, their spaces, and also photography. By breaking up and adding reflections, Ahn creates doors to other meanings, without being either too obvious or too ambiguous to grasp.
The Eastern, Korean sensibility brings an additional spirituality or introspection to the photographs. This calm is not something repressed, but rather, a quiet language of space, where placings of objects have their meanings. These are not images to strip down and define, but ones to contemplate, and find new approaches to. This is a truly reflexive exhibition, where the relationships between the subjects, the artist, the viewer and the surface which is photography, subtly ponder upon each other.
Brighton is awash with photography at the moment, with a Photo Biennial and fringe. Sometimes the images which make the most impact are not those with the loudest voice.
