Artwork text
Under an evening the color of dry grass,
a person and a horse lean on each other
and gaze toward the end of the horizon.
A long breath and a short sigh
mingle in the same air.
The one who left beyond the horizon
can no longer be seen.
But being unseen
does not mean that memory, too, disappears.
The receding boat
joins here and there,
today and eternity.
Perhaps longing is a time of silence:
keeping the one who left standing in the heart,
and keeping watch together.
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.