Artwork text
In the middle of the field, a thatched house.
The pine stands straight and casts its shade on the roof.
Before the house, the ox quietly waits for someone.
It is not an empty house.
It is a house whose people have stepped out for a while.
The sun is bright.
It spreads its rays and lights the house.
With no leaving,
and no farewell,
the midday of some ordinary day.
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.