Korean painter Ahn Chang Hong has opened a new solo exhibition in Seoul that turns the word paradise into an accusation. Paradise, on view at ARARIO GALLERY SEOUL from 4 November to 26 December 2026, brings together 39 recent and representative works, and it is the artist's first solo presentation at the gallery's Seoul space since Heart of the Artist in 2019.

The exhibition centres on works that layer paint over photographic images, including the Paradise Face and Paradise Hand series, in which Ahn paints over pigment prints of photographs made by the daguerreotypist Park Seoungil. Alongside the paintings, the show includes cast iron and other sculptural elements, extending a practice that has long combined painting, photography and three-dimensional work. Korean press coverage on 3 and 4 November framed the show around the question of who the paradise in the title is actually for, and who remains invisible within it.

Ahn, born in 1953, has built a reputation over five decades as one of South Korea's most significant contemporary artists, known for unflinching reflections on history, memory and violence. He has said that artists, as observers and witnesses of their time, must reveal the uncomfortable truths of society that people would rather avoid. That stance runs through the new works, which treat beauty and brutality as inseparable parts of the same picture.

The Seoul opening follows closely on Ahn's first solo museum exhibition in the United States, noon-mool, which opened on 5 September at the American University Museum in Washington, D.C. and runs through 6 December. That show, whose title means tears, surveys monumental paintings, photography-based works and installations exploring sorrow and empathy. His work is held in major public collections including the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, the Seoul Museum of Art and the Busan Museum of Contemporary Art.