Artwork text
A single black line
has entered the sea.
Not a road
but a single stroke.
A parched stroke.
Yet its end
is still wet.
The boat that left
has crossed the horizon
and can no longer be seen.
At the end of the jetty,
a bundle.
Its knot
is still tied.
Rain passed.
Sunlight passed.
Wind passed.
The knot
did not come loose.
A crow, once,
perched there and left.
The color of dry grass
faded a little more.
In between,
several summers
and winters.
While everything dried,
only the waiting
did not dry.
Beside it,
a person sits.
Like the bundle.
Still tied, still unopened.
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.