A Garden Made of Time

IRL Gallery is pleased to present Ana Won: A Garden Made of Time, the artist's debut solo exhibition in New York and her first exhibition with IRL Gallery, presenting a new body of paintings conceived as a poetic meditation on time, rhythm, and renewal. Rooted in intuition rather than systematization, Ana Won's practice approaches time through contemplation, movement, and poetry. Each painting carries its own distinct personality—some driven by chaotic, gestural strokes, others unfolding softly and quietly—together forming a circular narrative that moves from dawn to day, sunset to night, and back again. The exhibition unfolds like a visual poem: day is rendered as vibrant and expansive; sunset as transition; night as a space of mystery, magic, and transformation; dawn as rebirth; and the new day as vitality renewed. Through shifts in palette, material, and mark-making, the works capture fleeting instants within a continuous and cyclical passage of time. Working across scale, Won combines materials intuitively, allowing gesture and surface to guide each composition. While each painting stands independently, together they create an immersive atmosphere that reflects the cyclical nature of lived experience—time not as efficiency or measurement, but as sensation, return, and becoming. A Garden Made of Time brings together a new series of paintings that articulate this rhythm with clarity and restraint, marking a significant moment in the artist's evolving practice. Ana Won (b. 1989, Tucuman, Argentina) lives and works in Buenos Aires. Her practice conceives artworks as temporal beings—time machines that absorb, process, and transform historical, cultural, and material influences into new forms. Working across painting and sculptural constructions, Won's work moves fluidly between past, present, and speculative futures, engaging processes of accumulation, translation, and metamorphosis. Won studied at the National University of Tucuman and completed artistic and technical training in photography, alongside extensive research-based programs and clinics, including Yungas Contemporary Art, the Artists' Programme at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella (UTDT), and residencies at Fondo Nacional de las Artes, URRA, Zona Residency, Curator Residency, and Russia Gallery. She is the founder of Dicha, the first independent workshop space for artists in Tucuman. In 2022, she was awarded the First Prize from the Central Bank of the Argentine Republic. Her work has been exhibited at major institutions including the Latin American Art Museum of Buenos Aires (MALBA), Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires (MAMBA), Centro Cultural Kirchner (CCK), Fundacion Klemm, Museo Timoteo Navarro (Tucuman), Museo de Arte Contemporaneo Latinoamericano de La Plata (MACLA), Espacio Cripta, Fact Foundation, and Russia Gallery, among others. Recent solo exhibitions include The Immortality of Affections (KDR Gallery, USA, 2024), Cantos y Alaridos (Constitucion Gallery, Buenos Aires, 2021), Episodes of Painting (Lateral Gallery, 2017), and G3NERΔC1ON 1000ËNNI4Г (Espacio Tucuman, 2017). She has participated in international art fairs such as Arteba, ARCOmadrid, The Armory Show (New York), NADA Miami and New York, Pinta Parc Peru, and Material MX. Her works are held in public and private collections, including the permanent collection of the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires (MAMBA).