〈Light of Mt. Geumgang〉

In 2004, under the title "Ten Years of Longing, Mt. Geumgang," Shin Jang-sik held an interim survey of the Mt. Geumgang paintings he had pursued with unbroken focus for a decade. The optimistic vision — interwoven with the spirited, vivifying brushstrokes and the bright, lively colors that had appeared in works conceived as far back as before Mt. Geumgang opened in 1998 — had ripened into a state of full maturity, and these paintings were clearly the fruit of a decade-long devotion to a single object: Mt. Geumgang. Having served on the production team for the 1988 Seoul Olympics opening and closing ceremonies, he had labored to inherit tradition, and through Mt. Geumgang — even as first seen in photographs — he found a possibility he would pursue as if by fate. These works, which gather the painterly themes he has held to with such devotion, offered the artist himself an occasion for self-examination calling for renewed change, and the result is being cautiously revealed in this exhibition. Above all, the most striking feature is the broadly unfolding landscape, like the grand-scene sansu (daegyeong sansu), and the restraint of somewhat decorative expression in favor of a fidelity to the actual landscape — manifestations of an intent to view and express the true face (jinsang) of Mt. Geumgang from a closer vantage, and of an attitude, after three further visits since the previous exhibition, of remaining faithful to the true-view he had sketched on site.

That he has internalized the theme of the exhibition from "Ten Years of Longing" to "Light of Mt. Geumgang" likewise carries the intent of approaching the actual ever more closely while at the same time strengthening its symbolic meaning. This light shares something with the light and color pursued by Western Baroque or Impressionist painting, yet his work — alongside its visual transparency — calls us to look back at history and reality through Mt. Geumgang, and is, evidently, drawn from a more spiritual register. That is to say, his landscape painting holds not only the awe of nature but also the history within it and the longing for an ideal that transcends history — and in this lies its significance.

First, it is worth noting that the very name "Mt. Geumgang" springs from a Buddhist worldview. In Buddhism, geumgang (vajra, 金剛) signifies an unchanging truth as hard as diamond. The Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra (金剛般若波羅密經), a representative scripture of the Seon school, accordingly carries the meaning of a teaching of truth as solid as the vajra, able to cut through and dissolve all things. Though he does not paint Mt. Geumgang from a Buddhist worldview, one may presume that the hours in which he paints it are full of a heart that wishes, through the mountain's form, to know what unchanging truth might be. Furthermore, since Mt. Geumgang bears whole the historical tragedy of the South-North division born of political and ideological conflict, it is worth noting that he treats it not as a merely beautiful object but as a symbolic alternative through which such conflict might be overcome. Though scarred by the calamity of war, the enduring landscape makes one realize how meager and unseemly human greed is. The light of Mt. Geumgang that he probes, then, is not the visible light of physical phenomena but something belonging to the realm of the heart. The four seasons of Mt. Geumgang he paints remain enduring and refreshing, yet within them lie all the trials and glories of history. Even so, he does not grasp the difficulties of the present as suffering and despair alone — he sees the hope that lies beyond them. Light, then, is not only the ray that illumines Mt. Geumgang but the very light of hope we must not lose. In his paintings — undulating ranges, the prominent evergreen pines before them, the snowbound peaks and quiet valleys rippling in near and far — reading his optimistic worldview is not difficult. Yet his beautiful landscapes do not work as a "mechanism of evasion" that would have us forget the real contradictions and obstructions that remain. The real limits — that one can reach Mt. Geumgang only by crossing the fence, that one must hold a separate travel permit, that one may explore only restricted regions — appear faintly through his choices of subject. That he could paint only the places he had visited shows that the tragedy of division remains a stern reality. Nevertheless, rather than presenting division visually, he shows, through Mt. Geumgang's landscape, the layered accumulation of past and present time. In this sense, he waits for the day when he can paint, beyond Sejonbong (世尊峰) — which he painted often in this exhibition — the other faces of Mt. Geumgang. That waiting touches the hope of unification. Because for ten years he has painted Mt. Geumgang with such waiting, for him Mt. Geumgang remains an unfinished project.

Some may tilt their heads at the fact that this artist has been painting Mt. Geumgang for over ten years. But there is no reason for us to hurry. Gyeomjae Jeong Seon — who rendered Mt. Geumgang in the most Mt. Geumgang-like manner — visited the mountain in his mid-thirties with his teacher Samyeon Kim Chang-heup; he is said to have painted the 〈Sinmyo-nyeon Pungak Album〉 (1711), then the 〈Haeak Jeonsincheop〉, ultimately achieving jingyeong sansu (true-view landscape) and leaving brilliant Mt. Geumgang paintings until his passing — Jeong Seon was a great painter who devoted some forty years to Mt. Geumgang. Considering this, to call Shin Jang-sik's Mt. Geumgang painting his ongoing task — and a mission to convey the meaning and value of landscape painting to those who would turn from it as an outmoded genre — is no exaggeration. It is, therefore, not too much to hope that the light of Mt. Geumgang appears not only as a light shining on the future of unification but as a dawn light that further tempers his body of work. Through this exhibition, I hope that he will not conclude the Mt. Geumgang he has pursued so tenaciously but deepen it further, establishing his own content and idiom.

An artist documentary directed and produced by Shin Jang-sik with editing by Sohn Kyung-hwan (2005). Featuring photographs and footage from the artist's actual visits to Mt. Geumgang during the brief window of inter-Korean tourism — ship voyage, on-site bus transit, mountain hiking, and a poetry-and-painting exhibition held at Mt. Geumgang itself. Music — cellist Mischa Maisky performing "Longing for Mt. Geumgang" (from Best of Mischa Maisky).