It’s Winter

Every color existing in the world has shrunken.

Like the winter of New York that I wished to keep as thin and weak lines, the skinny lines began to be far away since several years ago. Their place is occupied by colors and planes slowly spreading.

Yes. I cannot but feel that it surely is reversed. For the intense colors and planes in Paris should co-exist with those in my New York studio. Nevertheless, there remain skinny lines on the canvas where lines and planes should remain. Since then, my theory of painting would collapse, while my vocational wandering started.

After all, I could not but rely on the simple line work. In 2004, a full-scale White Play Series was born, but I had still to hang about before the wall of question.

In 2006, a full scale of black series would be born, but I could not be satisfied with the simple line works. After all, in 2008, I could not but burn all the works I had produced.

The superficial reason why I burnt my painting works was that my line works were unsatisfactory and hollow, while I suffered from some mental wandering, but the actual reason was the opportunity to appreciate Damien Hirst’s solo exhibition. I would soon be awakened of myself; What artist am I? What should I draw in the future? His exhibition showed every rash possible in painting as if it were ridiculing artists’ freedom.

The realistic jewelry painting that seemed to have been committed to someone, the colorful butterfly work… On the same wall side, several copper plate works attached and cubic diamonds were lined upwards. The realistic skeleton work and the rectangular fish tank filled with the oil that featured the head of a cattle. A drug shelf containing the color spots on the canvas. The drug shelf occupied a corner. All the objects trapped in another corner, looked like having been thrown. I could not but be skeptical about the artist’s freedom characterizing his exhibition.

Is there any Korean artist active in New York who could afford to install his or her artworks so freely? If Damien Hirst should be not a British but a Korean, he could never afford to do so.

Since that day until today, I have to do at a dead-end, being impulsed to dispose all my works.

I will not again be drunken in the freedom recklessly like them. I will not permit myself to be reckless like them. After all, I flew all of my works drawn until then. They were all transformed into smoke. I returned to the winter day in my New York life to scoop up those dense and fine lines and planes onto my canvas again.

My DNA who wants not to mix but to have a single color or playing will fill my place in New York fully. The humble signs and patterns deserted by the human beings would be sometimes combined with the monochrome or sometimes sophisticated theory of physics to unfold a humane emotional story, keep in mind the meeting with the contemporary desired by both present and future.

I will meet him again when I feel a simple line and a genuine freedom.

When I need such lines converted not into an idea but into an intrinsic emotion, I will be able to meet a genuine line.

Until the day when we are able to express the children-like lines that we can frequently meet or cannot do so, I will only observe the freedom of such signs as line, color, plane and objects.

Dec. 27, 2014