Let There Be Light by Hyong Nam
Insa 1010 Gallery
January 14 through March 1st, 2026
This exhibition follows Hyong Nam Ahn’s major 2025 mid-career retrospective at the Moran Museum of Art and continues the celebration of his lifelong artistic and spiritual journey.
For over four decades, Ahn has pursued light as both medium and revelation—experimenting beyond conventional forms and expanding the possibilities of perception. His work stands at the intersection of faith, intuition, and material inquiry, offering a visual language shaped by deep attentiveness and unwavering conviction.
In an age marked by digital acceleration and cultural fragmentation, Let There Be Light turns our attention back to the embodied and somatic foundations of artistic knowledge. Hyong Nam Ahn’s sustained engagement with light—materially, perceptually, and spiritually—resonates with artists, makers, and seekers who creates and operate from outsider perspectives and who remain attuned to the subtle, often invisible strata of time. His practice invites viewers to enter a space where illumination becomes both an aesthetic principle and an ontological inquiry. His exploration of light becomes an invitation to rediscover clarity, presence, and transcendence.
ARTIST HYONG NAM AHN
Hyong Nam Ahn was born in 1955 in South Korea and immigrated to Seattle with his family during high school. He received both his BFA and MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1980. For over four decades, Ahn has bridged the roles of artist, sculptor, and inventor–creating a diverse and innovative body of work. Today, Ahn is regarded as one of the most respected Korean-American sculptor in the US.
At the core of Ahn’s practice is a dynamic interplay between pictorial flatness and sculptural presence. Striving to dissolve the boundaries between painting and sculpture, he distills form, material, and light into seamless, unified expressions that transcend objecthood and evoke the essence of natural phenomena.