Artwork text
An image steeped entirely in blue.
A rare color.
At the center, a single tree
rises with a strong trunk.
The tree,
with one hand, sends off the one who leaves,
and with the other, holds the one left behind.
Because the tree cannot leave,
it watches every parting.
To see off what departs,
and to hold the grief that remains.
Perhaps that is what this tree
has done all its life.
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.