Artwork text
uniform.
It darkens, then fades.
It thickens, then thins.
In some places it grows so thin it seems about to break;
in others it revives and thickens again.
Within a single line there are bends and turns.
This is the line of life.
Life, too, is not uniform.
There are times of strength and times of weariness.
Times of clarity and times of blur.
Just when it seems about to break, it joins again.
What moves the heart most is the place where it seems about to break.
That place where the line has thinned almost to vanishing.
There we hold our breath.
Will it break?
But the line does not break.
It continues, thinned.
And then it revives.
This is the form of endurance.
Endurance is not always strong.
In endurance there are moments that seem about to break.
Moments when one feels one can bear no more.
And yet not to break,
but to carry on, however thin.
That is endurance.
It is not only what continues thickly that is life.
What continues as though it might break is also life.
Perhaps that is a deeper life.
Within a single line, a whole lifetime is contained.
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.