Artwork text
The sky is black
and the wind is fierce.
The tree tilts,
the thatched house lowers.
The person clings to the horse's neck,
and the horse endures the person's weight.
Who is protecting whom
cannot be told.
The two, within the storm,
stand as if one body.
To endure
is not to grow strong alone,
but perhaps to borrow each other's bodies
just enough not to collapse.
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