Serenity installation view (Left to Right), Life After Amsterdam 1 (2022), In The Light (2023), Life After Amsterdam 3 (2021), featuring floral collaboration by Jean Pascal Lemire. Jean Pascal is a French florist who is a personal friend of Kim. He flew from LA for the opening of the exhibition to personally create four different bouquets to match the color palette of Kim's first NYC solo exhibition.




Kim Ahonoukoun and the 
Art of Serenity at Tambaran 2



Kim Ahonoukoun

Serenity


Tambaran 2 Gallery

5 E 82nd Street, New York, through May 27, 2023



By Benjamin Genocchio  




Kim Ahonoukoun 


“Kim Ahonoukoun is a French Canadian contemporary neo-impressionist painter,” is how Tambaran 2 Gallery, in New York, describes the artist, who currently has an exhibition of works there through May 27. The show is titled Serenity, a word that defines a state of being calm and peaceful, without trouble or care.


The title is surprisingly well chosen, for her paintings are indeed serene — blissful is another word that comes to mind, for they generate a feeling of happiness and peace. They provide an oasis amidst the chaos of contemporary urban life, in New York at least, depicting a cropped patch of a garden pond filled with colorful water lilies. What is more serene than that?  


Close inspection reveals a range of ponds being depicted in these paintings. There is variety and nuance here, for light is her theme and muse. Sometimes she paints water lilies during the daylight, at different hours to note and capture color variances, light and shadow. Sometimes she even paints her ponds at night.



Left: Midnight Water Lilies, 2022. Oil on canvas, 20 x 16 inches. Right: Scent of Nature, 2023. Oil on canvas, 48 x 48 inches.


Midnight Water Lilies, 2022, a small oil on canvas, offers perhaps the most obvious and instructive example of a night pond painting. It is on the darker side, of course, a glimmer of silver-blue moonlight seemingly washing the water's surface down the middle of the canvas. The lilies glow red in the moon’s cold reflective glare. Scent of Nature, 2023, is another thoughtful composition that might also be a pond at night.


Water lilies at night are also the subject of a serene, visually pleasing limited edition print Midnight In The Everglades, 2023, a giclée on archival cold press cotton rag, in a limited edition of 25, with 5 artist proofs, along with additional unique hand embellished editions as part of a limited series of 10. There is warmth to this image, in which the artist’s trademark water lilies float idly beneath a fringe of luminous yellow-green leaves. 


Serenity installation view (Left to Right), Limelight (2023), Dreamy Day In Central Park (2021),  Lilies In Central Park (2021), Central Park, Bainbridge (2021), Abstract Water Lilies 18 (2023), featuring floral collaboration by Jean Pascal Lemire.


Abstract Water Lilies 6, 2020. Oil on canvas, 24 x 36 inches.


Ahonoukoun is a self-taught artist, and even though she has been painting only for a few years her work has met with immediate success. There is no doubt she is a disciple of Claude Monet, whose paintings of water lilies in his garden at Giverny set the standard for paintings on this recherché theme. The title of a glorious, evocative 2021 diptych, Monet’s Garden Diptych, also makes it fairly plain that the master French impressionist painter is never too far from her mind.




Central Park, Bainebridge, 2021. Oil on canvas, 11 x 14 inches.

Along with Monet, there are hints of the paintings of Van Gogh, especially his love of swirling brushstrokes and bold colors. Nature both inspired and fascinated the Impressionist painters, and Ahonoukoun is no different — in her case, it is the mercurial, water-filled landscape of Miami, where she lives, surrounded by ponds, lakes, rivers and ocean inlets.


Ahonoukoun is not afraid to find inspiration and beauty in other settings. Several paintings depict water lilies seen in the ponds of Central Park in New York. The color yellow is more prevalent in these works, adding warmth to the cooler blue tones of the water and the natural, rich greens that tend to dominate her palette. There is also more energy and a beguiling sense of movement.


Serenity installation view (Left to Right), Williston (2020), Abstract Water Lilies 6 (2020), featuring floral collaboration by Jean Pascal Lemire.


Hope, 2020. Oil on canvas, 24 x 36 inches.


Nature is an endless source of inspiration for artists and each one of Ahonoukoun’s paintings of water lilies is different in some subtle way. Some paintings don’t even look like lily ponds, the artist prefers to use loser brushstrokes to merely hint at her subject matter.


Hope, 2020, is one of my favorites, not only because it is much lighter and airy than the other paintings in the exhibition but because it more freely approaches a state of pure abstraction. The title does not point to a subject, but rather a feeling or an idea. It transcends time and space, as well as subject matter and in such a way becomes, to my mind, more serene.