Artwork text
Before a wavering horizon,
the whole surface burns yellow.
Earth and sky alike
tremble in a single light.
Above, there is a thin line.
That is the horizon.
Below it
a single boat floats like a dot.
Lower down,
black brushstrokes surge like wind,
and beside them a thatched house crouches.
A lone figure, too, stands small.
The figure is not large.
The house is small, the boat far away.
Yet these small things
form the center of the surface.
A person always stands somewhere.
Underfoot, the earth;
overhead, the sky;
behind the back, the wind blows.
Before a wavering horizon,
the figure does not drift.
Facing a reeling world,
the figure stands at last with both feet on the earth.
He painted the posture of a human being facing the world.
Key context
Byun Shi-Ji was a Korean modern and contemporary painter who treated Jeju’s Fūdo not as scenery but as a condition of existence. Through solitude, waiting, wind and the colour of dried grass, his art formed a glocal modernism rooted in Korea and open to the world.