# Characteristics of AN Irip’s Paintings
AN Irip is an artist who can paint everything with complete freedom. From figuration to abstraction, the subjects, materials, themes, matière, atmosphere, and media are all diverse. Nothing limits the work. When painting, Irip holds an image in the mind and releases it swiftly and boldly, like an improvisational performance. Within these paintings drawn through the body and intuition, a primal energy lies in wait. Perhaps due to intensely trained technique, Irip stirs the broad currents of the canvas while exquisitely controlling the delicacy of the surface. Primal, fierce, cool, and meticulously restrained qualities run as a common thread through the work.
AN Irip is an artist who can paint everything with complete freedom. From figuration to abstraction, the subjects, materials, themes, matière, atmosphere, and media are all diverse. Nothing limits the work. When painting, Irip holds an image in the mind and releases it swiftly and boldly, like an improvisational performance. Within these paintings drawn through the body and intuition, a primal energy lies in wait. Perhaps due to intensely trained technique, Irip stirs the broad currents of the canvas while exquisitely controlling the delicacy of the surface. Primal, fierce, cool, and meticulously restrained qualities run as a common thread through the work.
Strangely, emotion seems absent from these paintings. The artist completely bleaches out emotion and stands on the sharp edge of reason, capturing the subject in its most elemental state. Perhaps that is why the work can be executed quickly. What usually delays a painting is emotion. In Irip’s work, the viewer cannot find traces of feeling. Because emotion does not cling to the viewing experience, there is no excess. The energy released from the artist’s body is absorbed rapidly and directly without loss. In a sense, emotion is messy and predictable. That is why AN Irip’s paintings are simultaneously powerful and refined.
These characteristics, untouched by emotional turbulence, emphasize the contemplative nature of the work. A surface where emotion is blocked suggests an intellectual attitude: not to involve the self in what is seen, not to impose judgment. It is a posture of seeing beyond oneself. Thus, the scenes Irip creates seem to go beyond the artist’s own existence and further beyond the subjects on the canvas, making contact with something more fundamental.
The contemplation of AN Irip is exercised in two ways. Reason functions both in observing humans, life, and the world, and in observing beauty itself. Even while releasing energy through inspiration, Irip never loosens the reins of reason, skillfully steering the helm. Irip resembles a professional musician who seems completely immersed in sound, yet precisely calculates even the infinitesimal timing of a single note shaped by rubato. In these paintings, raw, beating vitality emerges with sharpened intensity.
# The Absence of Emotion – A Strategy of Human Survival
The most distinctive position in AN Irip’s paintings is that emotion is completely removed, leaving only reason and instinct. Such a position contains a core. Therefore, one must ask a question. Why is emotion — the existential compass of humans — omitted here?
The most distinctive position in AN Irip’s paintings is that emotion is completely removed, leaving only reason and instinct. Such a position contains a core. Therefore, one must ask a question. Why is emotion — the existential compass of humans — omitted here?
There is no such thing as a person without emotion. So we must consider the moment when a human resolves to freeze emotion. When do you become cold? When you are betrayed by a friend you deeply trusted. When something swallowed as sweet is suddenly spat out as bitter. When, at your most painful moment, you must swallow your tears alone. When you are treated purely according to interests. When your good will turns into a dagger against you. When you witness someone’s cruel wickedness. When you realize the world is not easy. That you are alone. That if you are not useful, you can be discarded. That is how a person grows cold. That is how the heart hardens.
When what you thought was a relationship turns out to be a contract. When your pain becomes a weakness that gets bitten into. When the sincerity you offered feels unbearably shabby. When you are battered and feel you cannot endure anymore — precisely then, because you are so fragile, you freeze your heart harder than anyone else in order not to get hurt. At the very moment you are wounded the most, you instead straighten your mind. Because you must survive. You hide yourself.
So while there is no one without emotion, there is also no one who lives by exposing emotion as it is. Everyone has places where they must smile despite unfair treatment, places where sorrow must be suppressed and positivity performed.
AN Irip’s clown paintings give clues here. Most of the people Irip paints are clowns. If we consider how the way an artist paints people reveals how the artist perceives human beings — including the self — then AN Irip can be seen as understanding humans as clowns who must hide their true selves in order to survive, grotesquely painting smiles on their faces and presenting them to others.
A large work in which dozens of clowns gather and stare forward like a rigid group photograph seems to shout that all of us humans are clowns. In Irip’s gaze, are we destined to conceal our emotions in life and maintain smiling faces through makeup just to protect ourselves?
The clowns AN Irip paints, despite their flamboyant makeup, all wear tragic expressions. They melt downward in the image, as if existence itself is dissolving. They are sepia-toned, or their painted faces push saturation to extremes in sharp contrast. Irip paints clowns as if they are people disappearing from the world.
Erasing one’s feelings and putting on a smiling face involves such deep pain that it sweeps away one’s existence, yet it is an inevitable struggle for survival that cannot be taken off.
Meanwhile, if one looks closely at Irip’s color clown paintings, one discovers that the bloodshot, tear-filled eyes are replaced with those of animals. Humans overlap with animals. When we look at animals, the vulnerability that living beings inevitably possess becomes especially visible. Because they are weak, they are desperately oriented toward survival. Perhaps the artist feels in human existence the same endless pity and tenderness that we feel when we look at animals.
# The Position of Living Beings – The Fate of Survival
Through the eyes of the clowns, the viewer can sense that AN Irip’s animals are metaphors for humans. Looking at Irip’s animal paintings feels as if the word “SURVIVAL” were written in bold capital letters.
Through the eyes of the clowns, the viewer can sense that AN Irip’s animals are metaphors for humans. Looking at Irip’s animal paintings feels as if the word “SURVIVAL” were written in bold capital letters.
In the scene of a long-starved, sharpened, dry coyote drinking water, a storm-before-the-calm stillness is condensed. In the swift leap of a predator snatching a flying bird for today’s meal, a desperate energy is embedded. Every being in nature is coldly lonely. No one lives on behalf of another. Every environment works to erase one’s life, and each day is fierce. To stay alive, one must wager existence itself. Having food today does not guarantee food tomorrow. Surviving today does not mean you will not be eaten tomorrow. One can only do one’s best. Thus, every day is survival — fierce survival.
Some of the animals in AN Irip’s paintings have their heads omitted. Irip repeatedly paints beings without necks. They are clearly alive, yet they have no heads. The head is the place of reason, individuality, emotion, and soul, and it is erased. What remains is only the torso.
Looking at the bird painted on a blue ground — a nameless bird — again only the desperately survival-oriented body endures. Its body blurs into the blue field that pulls downward, as if boundaries dissolve. Something tries to sweep the bird away, yet the body is not swept. The claws gripping the branch firmly, the thick white paint placed at the center of the body, and the rounded volume of the torso reveal the mass and will of life that insists on living despite an environment trying to erase it.
The disappearance of the face — the place where emotion and individuality gather — shows the mercilessness of an environment that erases even the face and leaves only the torso as evidence of life. Headlessness also tells us that this survival is not a matter of reason or emotion but a fierce existential act carried out by the body itself.
Viewers confronting Irip’s animal paintings arrive at the understanding that this kind of survival is not only the issue of these creatures, but the story of all universal beings with flesh and skin. This is also AN Irip’s way of understanding life as a human.
“Must we not give ourselves entirely as the price for ourselves, and give our lives as the price for life?” (Wisława Szymborska).
The metaphor of survival is perhaps our everyday living. We are born, granted life from somewhere, and at the same time begin to die. While living, we must continuously strive to survive. Through the overlap of humans and animals and the linking of animal survival to human survival, viewers come to acknowledge that their own struggle is not merely personal but an inevitability connected to nature, part of a great natural law.
# The Secret of Nature – The Position of Contemplation
The way AN Irip understands human sorrowful survival through nature elevates the dignity of the work. Instead of burying pain in personal misfortune, Irip expands it into the pain of all living beings and embraces it as a law of nature.
The way AN Irip understands human sorrowful survival through nature elevates the dignity of the work. Instead of burying pain in personal misfortune, Irip expands it into the pain of all living beings and embraces it as a law of nature.
The time of survival that resists headwinds erasing one’s existence is not only personal, but can be understood within the vast order of natural law. All beings in nature are fierce survivors, and the pain of survivors is both providence and order. Within this, Irip transcends the self and becomes absorbed into a larger system.
That is why AN Irip’s landscapes feel mysterious. Nature, which turns the wheels of all survivors, is ruthless, indifferent, infinitely vast, and majestically beautiful to the point of fear. In this context, seeing the world becomes seeing oneself, and seeing oneself becomes seeing the world. AN Irip keeps watching. As a part of natural law, Irip holds breath and looks at the world. Thus the works seem to reveal secrets. They are mysterious, as if piercing the providence beyond the surface.
To see in this way creates a position where, instead of crying over one’s own pain, one must understand everyone’s place at a distance. Nature that contains survivors is solemn, merciless, beautiful, and strangely warm. In this way Irip looks at today’s anxiety. Instead of opposing the environment, a leap occurs in acknowledging oneself as part of nature. Daily survival is arduous yet beautiful. Therefore AN Irip is survival-oriented but not impatient. Everything is merely natural law. The dignity embedded in the desperate works comes from this acceptance.
Irip touches what lies beyond the laws that move the world and simply seeks to know what it is. Irip looks straight. AN Irip’s nature paintings contain the providence of survival as a stage. Realizing that everything is nature’s issue, the artist continues only to gaze at the secret without adding, subtracting, or coloring. Thus comes compliance. Survival is the destiny of all living beings, and Irip’s fierceness becomes acceptance and unity with nature. It unfolds within nature, not against it. Perhaps Irip embraces everything with the essence called nature, accepting it all. Ultimately, all of AN Irip’s works communicate with this secret: what are life, nature, and the world?
Thus Irip looks again and again. Even the sharp place of ruthless survival is seen more vividly. The core of AN Irip’s world is the beauty created by the tension between acceptance of natural law and the desperate pain of survivors. In this way Irip contemplates. What transcends existence is elegant. Growth occurs not when one insists, but when one submits to a higher line.
# Meta-Truth – The Struggle to Find the Head
If one decisive point where the truth of AN Irip sharpens must be chosen, it is Irip’s real life resisting the headwind that demands erasure of existence. AN Irip does not change style merely to sell well. As mentioned earlier, the paintings are cold, intense, and truthful. They do not anesthetize by highlighting only happy, pretty sides. They contain the essence Irip has examined and awaken the viewer’s senses and mind.
If one decisive point where the truth of AN Irip sharpens must be chosen, it is Irip’s real life resisting the headwind that demands erasure of existence. AN Irip does not change style merely to sell well. As mentioned earlier, the paintings are cold, intense, and truthful. They do not anesthetize by highlighting only happy, pretty sides. They contain the essence Irip has examined and awaken the viewer’s senses and mind.
Such paintings are unpopular as interior products. Who wants to hang headless animals in a room, especially in Korea? (The most recent collector who embraced Irip’s work lives in Hamburg, Germany.) Irip knows this painfully well, because it is existence itself. To continue painting coldness with soul means abandoning practicality as interior decoration. It means painting what must be painted even if it does not sell.
So sometimes AN Irip asks me, “Should I paint pretty things that sell well?” I laugh and say I wouldn’t hang them. Irip laughs too, saying it’s a joke because that is not something Irip can do.
Thus, while painting the survival of beings without heads — symbols of spirit, soul, and individuality — AN Irip’s real life ironically becomes the process of standing the head upright. When planning an exhibition, Irip said money would be “pulled forward” to buy paint. Maintaining a style that may not sell means pulling money forward for materials rather than erasing the head. It is the will not to compromise.
Perhaps the reason Irip looks so directly at the cruel survival mechanisms of living beings is to look directly at personal circumstances. Perhaps Irip keeps seeing that survival is originally difficult and headless, bodily, desperate work, ironically in order not to lose one’s own head — in order not to pay the soul as the price of life.
# Looking Without Avoidance
At a gathering last week, someone approached me and spoke about AN Irip. They said they could not forget the works from last year’s exhibition. They said the works feel vividly alive. Living beings struggle so fiercely because they want to live that much. Survival contains the will toward life. Life is dazzling.
At a gathering last week, someone approached me and spoke about AN Irip. They said they could not forget the works from last year’s exhibition. They said the works feel vividly alive. Living beings struggle so fiercely because they want to live that much. Survival contains the will toward life. Life is dazzling.
AN Irip looks straight and unravels secrets from deep places. Irip recognizes cruel reality and stands firmly on it. Survival is like that. Living is like that.
Since modern times, as public hygiene became important, “hygiene” has settled almost like an ideology. Not only physical hygiene, but also depression, pain, crying, evil, disability, disease, dirtiness, unproductivity, death, cruelty, instinct — although they exist — are swept away and made difficult to see. In such a world of sweetness and cleanliness, when we are sick, we feel as if we must disappear. Yet what exists cannot truly vanish. Untruth only accelerates anxiety.
Recently AN Irip told me this:
“When I was young, I saw the Joker in the movie Batman. The Joker played by Jack Nicholson. He was terrifying. I was shocked. I couldn’t forget him. So I drew him. I kept drawing.”
Those who see frightening, shocking things can choose many actions: erase them, run away, pass by. But AN Irip is someone who looks again and again. Someone who holds it in the heart and holds it again, and finally releases it. To look straight at painful, frightening things without avoiding them is Irip’s life, and Irip must have discovered many secrets.
AN Irip’s work proves that tragedy seen accurately is more beautiful than happiness inside illusion. Even while focusing on ruthless intensity, Irip does not lose contemplative coolness. This attitude is elegant. Irip’s truthful gaze makes the tragedy resonate with higher, more essential laws beyond pessimism.
Irip looks at the world, but also captures invisible orders beyond it. That is why the work feels mysterious and grand, even inhuman, as if not entirely of humans. The coldness of the screen confuses the viewer with the chill that runs down the spine when witnessing something truly wondrous.
Irip’s gaze at the world and life is a powerful will toward life — hope, passion, a fervent affirmation of existence. That is why AN Irip’s paintings are so hot. We can only move forward when we look straight. Only then can we overcome.
AN Irip’s pain goes far beyond narrowness and touches something fundamental beyond. There is a beauty only truth and coldness can achieve. It is the elegance and dignity of a living being who carries one’s own cross forward without blaming others or crying over personal misery.
Oh A-young (Director, Gallery A)