1999
2025
Under the premise that only purely sublimated artwork can commune with cosmic secrets, I contemplate, meditate, and execute my work. Around 2010, when The Red Book by Carl Jungโwhom I deeply revereโwas published, I was immersed in a profound study of his concept of the unconscious. Around that same time, I encountered The Secret Life of Plants by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird.
2025 Moran Museum of Art Solo Exhibition
2023
They say that salmon live in the ocean but return to their natal riversโthe very waters where they hatched and departedโto lay their eggs. It is said that after spawning, they tend to their newly hatched fry before they die. And of those fry, only about half manage to journey back to the sea. What drives them to undertake a voyage that demands such a risk of death? Where was that primal instinct nurtured, compelling them to brave the immense and treacherous ocean despite the peril?
2023 Yungeun Museum of Contemporary Art Special Exhibition II
The tree is shaped like a triangle pointing toward the sky. Its roots are inverted triangles pointing downward, pushing deep into the ground. With the equilateral triangle upward, the inverted triangle downward, and the sky and earth connected, they achieve perfection and grow.
I have spent a lot of time in the forest for decades. The forest of trees feels like entering the Tibetan TONGLEN meditation monks' pond, existing with a whole-body sacrifice. Entering the forest, anyone opens their chest and follows the energy of their breath, feeling vitality and the joy of life, immersing themselves in meditation with the trees standing quietly in silence. They come to sense an unknown, transcendent power, spirituality, and an incomprehensible energy.
Since I was young, I have been deeply interested in trees and wildflowers. When I became a senior student in elementary school, I received a book called 'Plant Encyclopedia,' and I loved it so much that I never let go of it, carrying it everywhere, and whenever new flowers bloomed or new leaves appeared on trees, I would look at the book and study it alone. I didn't boast about it to anyone; I just felt proud and delighted knowing about the life of those plants. You can picture their beauty, see and smell them, and in spring, when you hold each tree and press your ears close, you can hear the sound of sap flowing. How excited and happy it was. Each tree had a strong and weak sound, and if no tree made any sound, I would often wonder why I might get sick.
The trees in the forest were the closest friends of my soul in my life. If I sat quietly beside them, I could listen to the stories they heard from stars, wind, and clouds somewhere. We often hear stories of giant trees uprooted by heavy rain and typhoons somewhere, countless houses and people swept away by disasters, places where volcanic eruptions and shooting stars fell, and stories of stars happening across many universes. It was extremely difficult because I could not accept that it was a reality, not a dream. At first, I doubted myself out of fear that I had become a strange shaman, but now it has become part of my daily life in my secret forest, and I am very happy.
2021
Even if it's not a scientific book studying the spiritual world of plants, or even if you don't believe in superstitions about sacred trees, I can sense that trees live together with humans between heaven and earth have souls. They may not have been anywhere, but they hear, see, and feel news from the universe and the changes happening on Earth.
2016
I am always observing the changes in my heart throughout life. Seeing the mind is to open it. When the door to a space is closed, it separates the inside and outside, but when the door is open, communication is smooth and there is no distinction. When the heart is open, inside and outside are no longer two. Like the structure of Mรถbius's strip symbolizing infinity, the midpoint that will become the door's location marks the point where the door is located, forming a seamless connection between inside and outside. Our thoughts can be said to be alive when we feel the operation of the five senses opening the door to the atmosphere and communicating with it. In that state, being mindful of what intention is acting as desire It can be said that you live as the master of your own life.
2015
I live in a coastal forest where the wind drifts. The wind returns after circling the world, leaving a weary body as if lamenting the distant, unknown world, the beauty and pain of human life, and the transience of all things in this world, all with a low whistling sound.
Living Void, Triangle, Slavoye ลฝiลพek, Black House, Memory Treasury of Obsession, Friedrich Nietzsche, Kaleidoscope, Yogฤcฤra, Zen Buddhism, Surrealism, Renรฉ Magritte, Children's "Aha" Experience, Identity, Wonhyo, Mangong, Sondam Monk, Fairy Tale Book, Eric Fromm, Bill Viola, Ryu Si-hwa, Kahlil Jiburan, No Time No Place, Paul Tillich, Postmodernism...
