Alone with you

(2023 ver)

The figures in my oil paintings, made from my memory or imagination, at first appear alone and disconnected, leaning on a table or gazing apathetically in different directions, even though they are with others. Their facial expressions are hidden; in some paintings, their mouths and eyes are missing, only noses and ears are shown. It’s as if this is a way of keeping their secrets, or as if they are asleep with closed eyes. Their huge bodies look heavy enough to make a lot of noise when moving around, but, paradoxically, they also seem to float, as in dreams or memories, implying the suspension of time in memory. The figures stay in the space of memory to better grasp the moment they are missing. But they also live in that moment, filling the void with their gentle gestures. Therefore all the moments accumulate and become another time just for them. The self-imposed solitude and the desire for connection are incompatible, but they build a new way of communication through their cautious body language. They are always so quiet, carefully moving with their heightened senses of touch and smell, careful not to leave any marks or scratches around them on.

Tenderness, to quote Roland Barthes, is an “infringed and an insatiable metonymy” for love. The figures’ gentle gestures in my paintings are a metonym of their ineffable silent desire to be loved by others. The figures move their hands and bodies delicately as if everything around them were fragile and could break easily if touched. Even in a small space like a balcony or a compact interior space with a table, they keep a careful distance from each other. This distance expresses waiting for affection from others rather than trying to seize it right away. This is how they protect their hearts, but it is also a way of giving love as an active practice. Even if their love sometimes takes a long time to be noticed, it is always there.

With their tender gestures, they also hope to protect their own identity and existence. For them, love means allowing a sense of belonging. Falling in love is a process of becoming aware of the separateness of others and at the same time a process of knowing oneself. In this process, having lost themselves, they seek to reestablish their own existence by concentrating on every facet of their lives. This is also based on the Buddhist belief, Dependent Arising, Yeongi-sull, which denies the reality of the self, but offers proof of one’s existence through interacting with others and surrounding objects. In other words, this is a symbiotic relationship: I exist because of you and you exist because of me. They, the figures, are here, in this place, to find and grasp their identity and existence in a state of denial of the reality of the self. The will to identify their existence shows the need and desire to relate to others and to mundane things, even if that thing is just a bean or a salt shaker. This shows they are in a state of absence of the substance of the self and that their gender does not matter anymore to them in the eternal cycles of rebirth. The figures’ gender is concealed by covering their arms and legs or turning their bodies away from the viewers.