Young-Il Ahn’s exquisite Water paintings are the result of his decades-long engagement with the refractory qualities of water. An avid fisherman, Ahn’s painting practice was forever changed when, in 1983, a motorboat he was operating became engulfed by fog off the Santa Monica coast. Unable to get his bearings, Ahn drifted on the Pacific Ocean; as he later recalled, “I lost all sense of direction. I cut the engine and let the currents take me.” When the fog cleared, his experience of sunlight rippling on the waves became an inspiration that would fuel his practice from that day forward; in the artist’s words, “To contain variations of so many kinds of roiling water under the sunlight on a canvas, I painted and painted and could not stop.”