Artwork text
The sun is overhead.
There is no shade,
no place to hide.
The wind overturns the field,
and the boat floats far away.
The house crouches low,
and the tree shakes in black.
One person
bends beneath it.
There is so much light
that nothing seems to touch.
Noon
is the middle of the day
and the highest place of solitude.
There is no darkness left to retreat into,
no evening to wait for.
Everything is bright,
yet no one is beside them.
And so, within the brightest hour,
that figure becomes most deeply alone.
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.