Artwork text
The bow is offered to the sky and the sea,
but the eyes keep turning to the boat afloat far away.
The prayer to the god, the heart to the boat.
Within one person, it is divided between two places.
That small boat is the work of one who crosses the boundary,
and this rock is the place where one prays for that person's safety.
Between the endless sea and the lonely land,
a single prayer joins the one who left and the one who remained.
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.