Pilgrim • Baekja An open circuit of becoming.
“Responding to the present is a choice, and that choice is a participation in possibilities yet to come.”
Amid an environment of expanding indeterminacy, all beings already exist within relationships and reveal themselves through relationships of becoming. Existence is not a fixed or separate entity, but is in a process of becoming and reconfiguration. Based on this contemporary ontological perspective, Hyesook Oh reinterprets the tradition of Korean white porcelain as a contemporary painterly practice through her series Pilgrim • Baekja, centered on the moon jar. The formal structure of the moon jar embodies this structure of existence.
This formal structure holds the possibility of different relationships meeting and transforming within uncertainty. Paradoxically, the traces and transformations that emerge through this process open new possibilities for existence.
Large moon jars are made using the updaji technique, in which two hemispheres are joined to maintain the large form. During the drying process, shrinkage and subtle warping occur, and the form is then carved down to create an irregular shape. The traces of joining, irregularity, and imbalance that inevitably emerge through this process are not defects to be corrected toward a perfected form, but generative principles that reveal the continuity and becoming of existence. This generative principle is subsequently realized on the canvas through the painterly language of ‘Gyeol’.
Gyeol is a painterly language and medium that mediates existence. The Korean word ‘결’ (gyeol) is ontologically reconfigured into three dimensions: ground, gap, and time. Ground signifies the potentiality of existence; gap, a transitional field in which latent states are revealed; and time, a nonlinear cyclical structure. Gyeol is realized within a nonlinear spatiotemporal circuit structure in which states of existence accumulate and become the ground of existence again.
Gap operates on the canvas through traces of scars, spots, repairs, layering, and imbalance. The ‘error that is not an error,’ appearing as a defect to be corrected, enables a new transition through which a latent state can be revealed. The traces accumulated on the canvas function not as absence or deficiency, but as catalysts for the reconfiguration of existence.
What her painting captures is the moment when a latant state of existence is revealed. Her practice captures not a completed object, but the moment when a state of existence emerges and is reconfigured through encounter and response. This moment marks a point of transition at which a state of existence becomes the ground of existence again. This moment of becoming is visualized through painting.
The forms that emerge on the canvas are not representations of existence, but events of becoming through which existence reveals itself through encounter and response. To encounter a work is to stand at the threshold of becoming. Pilgrim • Baekja reflects our contemporary condition, already situated within a circuit of encounter and response. Each response to the present we encounter opens a possibility yet to come. Through this continuity, states of existence emerge and are reconfigured, opening the possibility of coexistence.
Responding to the present is a choice, and that choice is a participation in possibilities yet to come.
Pilgrim • Baekja is a painterly practice in which becoming operates as a nonlinear spatiotemporal circuit. The practice reinterprets the traditional formal structure of the moon jar in light of contemporary media and conditions of existence, transforming it into a new painterly structure. Coexistence is not a result, but a possibility of expanding continuity through the choice to respond to encounter. In an environment of expanding indeterminacy, her painting explores the process of becoming that continually extends toward coexistence.
Korean →
“Pilgrim • Baekja reflects our contemporary condition, already situated within a circuit of encounter and response. Each response to the present we encounter opens a possibility yet to come. Through this continuity, states of existence emerge and are reconfigured, opening the possibility of coexistence.”
— From the Artist Note
Carpe Diem. Respond to the moment.