Dreaming of Another World: NYC-Artist Rei Ahni's Debut Solo Show

About

Celebrate the end of 2018 with the twenty-something-year-old NYC-based artist Rei Ahni as she makes her debut in December with a solo art exhibition “Dreaming of Another World.” On view from December 1 to 31, 2018 at East Village's Klimat as part of the lounge's Featured Artist of the Month program, Ahni's show presents over a dozen of her original surreal acrylic-on-canvas paintings. The young artist's first exhibition is an invitation to take a break from the cold and dark reality of winter and escape into the dream world she's created through her art, one that is guided by her love for science fiction, existential exploration, and 50's pin-up culture. All are welcome to join the artist for the show’s opening reception on Tuesday, December 4, 2018 from 7pm to 10pm.

Ahni's body of work is a fantastical narrative of the young multicultural woman’s philosophical journey as she finds tranquility, solace, and beauty within reality’s chaos, unpredictability, and routine played out through a cast of robot and humanoid proxies.  Layered with paradoxes and juxtapositions, her pieces are whimsical, yet ominous, as the artist conveys her abstract musings with literal symbolisms rendered in her distinct illustrative painting style often dominated by her frequent use of striking blue, luscious pink, and silky purple shades.    

A product of East Asian, North and South American cultures, the artist uses her eclectic background to inform her artistic language. She reinterprets motifs and themes from traditional Chinese watercolor paintings ("guohua") and Japanese tattoos ("irezumi") with sensibilities from contemporary Western art and underground movements to construct the world in her art.  Particularly inspired by Modernism, Pop Art, Street Art, Retro Aesthetics, plus Designer Vinyl Toys, she takes cues from each and establishes her own stylistic canon of rich colors, bold contrast, sharp lines, sturdy forms, and clean textures.

Her original one-of-a-kind paintings will be available for private purchase, just in time for the Holidays!  Please visit her website for more information about the exhibition, its featured paintings, and the artist herself: www.reiahni.com.