Artwork text
A black rock
lies long.
On the left, a skiff;
on the right, a bird.
At a slant, they ride the wind.
Below, a horse,
and against its neck
a person leans.
Horse and person and bird,
all are tilted.
This accord is not by chance.
It is
the wind's signature.
Under a wind that blows in one direction,
the great and the small alike
give their bodies
to the same side.
To endure
is not only to hold out.
Perhaps it is, so as not to break,
to lean together.
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.