Artwork text
Even for the one who cannot leave,
there is, in the end, a place to look toward.
It is the sky.
The tree gives its body
to the wind.
It bends as much as it gives,
and survives as much as it bends.
Because there is a sky, it endures,
and from what it endures,
a shape remains in its body.
That bent shape
is not a trace of defeat.
It is the shape of endurance
that never forgot the sky.
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.
painterJejuartsolitudeFūdo (milieu and climate)waitingmodernismglocalismKorean painter