I adore Chusa Kim Jeong-hui, one of the most celebrated practitioners of calligraphy, epigraphists, poets, painters, and scholars of Korea’s later Joseon period. Sehando, meaning “a painting in the bitter cold of the winter,” which Kim painted in gratitude to Lee Sangjeok during his exile on Jeju Island, is widely considered his representative piece of artwork.

Using the Chinese painting technique of “jiaomo,” which requires artists to dip a dry brush into thick ink before painting, Kim painted this winter scene with majestic yet free-spirited brush strokes on layered sheets of low-quality paper. This greatest masterpiece of Korean literati painting reflects the mature spirit of scholar-painter Kim, concisely capturing the essence of the hardships of living in exile and the political turmoil at that time.

I once was fascinated by the splendid appearances of materials and tried to represent only them. Because I was looking at objects only from a general point of view, I felt empty when I finished my works, without touching the viewers deep in their hearts. It required long anguish and the attitude of self-discipline for me to realize the essence of things. I looked for a new way by being communion with Mother Nature, seeing and feeling mountains, watching waterfalls, and meeting trees.

The ancient painters depicted the spiritual world or the inside of the subject simply and concisely through delicate gradation in the tonality of ink. I also tried to grasp the symbolic essence of beautiful mountains, night waterfalls, and winter trees by employing the element of line and the technique of tonal gradation from a new perspective of the modern camera. There is still a long way to go. To me, understanding the essence is both a religion and the process of the Zen practice.

I want to show the essence of the bigger inside, or emptiness, which embraces all invisible things behind the splendidness of visible colors of objects.

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The object of my work is a waterfall at night. This is because a beautiful waterfall embracing the daytime allows you to find another inner world in the waterfall at night. I paint over the waterfall with light through action. The act of drawing on a waterfall using various types of light, the act of dancing with the whole body with light, and finally the process of being recorded as chemical codes on film can be said to be a work that combines elements of painting, performance, and photography.

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After removing unnecessary elements one by one, only the strong and soft water of the waterfall remains. This is the core and essence.

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The ancestors of the past drew the spiritual world behind the object by expressing it plainly and concisely using the concentration of ink. I also expressed the waterfall at night using the concentration of ink through a new perspective and reinterpretation, and only drew the essence it symbolizes using light.

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Realizing the essence is a religion to me, and it is a process of Zen practice in search of oriental thoughts. Rather than the splendor of the color itself given by objects, I want to show the big inner world of 'naught(nothing)' that embraces everything invisible beyond that.