Light is color. These days, when the Western culture analyses light through colors, emptiness already refers to a positive cosmology where emptiness is nothing other than form. It is like the long-held oxymoron in Eastern society which says 'Form means nothing other than emptiness.' Unlike the fear of emptiness in Western thinking—for humans who cannot escape from the time and space of visible lights, emptiness is fear—, the depth of emptiness was considered to be a wonderment, reaching infinity in the Eastern tradition. The notion of infinity taught us about the sublime through light that shines upon our finite universe.

My work begins from cross sections of paper which I make by cutting through pieces of rough paper. Through the practice of cutting paper and creating a background with the cross-sections I have delved into the texture of the background for a long time. My practice is also to make a painterly expression of ‘a will to live’ by employing the tactical materiality of the surface and the lines. My ‘line making’ is an act that embodies a corporeal sense of ‘here and now.’ Like the strokes that hold energy in Eastern calligraphy, every single line imparts the tension of coincidental brush stokes, which only humans can express. The materiality of rough lines are the cornerstones that constitute my inner will and mental world, reflecting the complex meanings of attachments such as my hope, 'han' (deep sorrow and resentment), and decisiveness. The repetition of lines made through cutting, and the texture of the surface resembling the accumulation of scars, are primal actions rooted in my life and art where I miss, imagine, and draw. These lines are repeated and accumulated to build a background of Zen; one of the long-held spirits in the Far East, like a wish of a prayer. The goal of my work is to find effective ways to express tactical lights, tactical colors, and tactical spaces, along with the materiality of ‘background'. I explore the expressions (actions) that reflect the present moment of human existence or emblems of hope found in religious devotion through the visual-perceptual effects of lights and the images of palpable colors. The tactical materiality of the light and color, and the light permeating through the colors, reflect moments of pain, oblivion, and frustration, as well as the accumulation of prayers and thoughts. Investigating the themes of light and color, and questions surrounding visible and invisible spaces, I fill the picture plane with the philosophical subject in addition to inquiries about the existential space of the universe and the ultimate unknowability of human existence. 

Even though we cannot reach the ascetic stage in the war-like reality of the human world, I hope my work becomes the light and color of hope that sustains us in this exhausting life without denying reality. Additionally, I hope my work is born again into the space. I want to act through Zen, to communicate with others and pray through the picture plane of Zen. Furthermore, I aspire to renew myself with an artistic view that seeks relational life between humans and nature, as well as between humans and humans. - 2017, Kim Wan