Absolute Space (No Longer in Time) – Hyong Nam Ahn at AP Space

Explore Absolute Space (No Longer in Time), the first major retrospective of Korean artist Hyong Nam Ahn. On view at AP Space, the show bridges kinetic art, sculpture, and viewer interaction in a transformative experience beyond time and form.

Art is often thought of as static—a painting hung, a sculpture placed, a viewer standing still. But in Absolute Space (No Longer in Time), Hyong Nam Ahn rewrites this equation entirely. In his first comprehensive retrospective, on view at AP Space from November 30, 2023 to January 7, 2024, the Korean-born artist invites us into a living conversation between material, movement, and meaning—one that transcends both frame and form.

Spanning over four decades of visionary work, this exhibition traces Ahn’s lifelong mission to dissolve the boundaries between painting, sculpture, technology, and nature, offering a compelling argument that space is never empty, and art is never still.

Hyong Nam Ahn is more than an artist—he is an inventor of experiences. Throughout his career, he has combined metal, neon, wire, sound, motion, and light to create works that are not simply objects, but phenomena. Each piece is carefully designed to engage with its surroundings and its viewers, functioning more as activated environments than as traditional art forms.

The title Absolute Space (No Longer in Time) speaks to Ahn’s ongoing quest: to collapse the difference between time and space, object and observer. His artworks challenge the viewer not just to look, but to move, interact, and intuit. Here, the viewer is not separate from the work, but part of it—a co-creator of its meaning and movement.

Ahn’s work has always been concerned with what exists between. Between two-dimensional and three-dimensional. Between technology and nature. Between stillness and kinetic energy. By seamlessly integrating sculptural form with painting’s visual language, he builds what critics have called a “formative system”—one that evolves in direct response to both human interaction and environmental influence.

This exhibition brings together a powerful range of materials and techniques: brushed steel forms, neon illumination, mechanized sculpture, and natural stone all coexist within the gallery. In some works, the viewer’s proximity triggers a visual or auditory response. In others, subtle shifts in light or movement reveal new dimensions previously hidden. All are united by Ahn’s signature logic—a fusion of engineering and poetic intuition.

Hyong Nam Ahn’s practice finds historical alignment with Kinetic Art and Light and Space movements, particularly in the way it seeks to destabilize traditional objecthood. His works ask: Can a sculpture feel like a phenomenon? Can painting move? Can an object have agency?

The answer, in Ahn’s hands, is yes.
Yet while his influences are global, Ahn’s vision is also distinctly personal. His Korean heritage, training in both East and West, and decades of experimentation in the U.S. have contributed to an artistic voice that feels both philosophical and forward-thinking—rooted in nature, but never bound by it.

Perhaps the most radical element of Ahn’s work is how it redefines the role of the viewer. In Absolute Space (No Longer in Time), to view is to participate. To move is to change. The boundaries between artwork and audience dissolve as viewers are prompted to engage not just with their eyes, but with their bodies, memories, and perceptions.

This is not art as decoration—it’s art as invitation. An invitation to cross into unseen dimensions. To feel the rhythm between movement and stillness. To occupy a space that is no longer constrained by time, but expanded by presence.