Artwork text
1965 — Seoul years — essay
Aeryeonjeong (愛蓮亭): a pavilion in the rear garden of Changdeokgung Palace, Seoul.
By the pond stands a pavilion.
The trees, turned to autumn colors, wear green and yellow and red all together.
The tiled roof sinks into deep shade,
and the pond water receives all that light upside down into itself.
There is much color on the surface.
There is red, there is green, there is yellow.
The young painter knew splendor,
and he knew how to paint it.
But in later years, he would set these many colors down, one by one.
What remains after splendor is given up?
That answer has not yet been reflected in this pond.
Yet this painting says:
only one who knows how to let go has ever had something to let go of.
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.