A Person Met at Samilpo

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• Text Review 2005-10-26 · Choi Tae-man

  'Light of Mt. Geumgang' — Review by Choi Tae-man (2005)

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  Text Review 2005-10-26 · Choi Tae-man

  'Light of Mt. Geumgang' — Review by Choi Tae-man (2005)

  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.

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• Video Feature 2005 · Artist's Blog

  2005 Light of Mt. Geumgang — Shin Jang-sik Artist Video (2005)

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  Video Feature 2005 · Artist's Blog

  2005 Light of Mt. Geumgang — Shin Jang-sik Artist Video (2005)

  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).

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• Mixed Lecture 2011-05-25 · Shin Jang-sik

  Okinawa International University Symposium — 'Mt. Geumgang Paintings' (Shin Jang-sik) (2011)

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  Mixed Lecture 2011-05-25 · Shin Jang-sik

  Okinawa International University Symposium — 'Mt. Geumgang Paintings' (Shin Jang-sik) (2011)

  Geumgang stands there as space, yet it abides with the twenty years of time in which it met me. Through 365 days, through twelve months, Geumgang was together with my time. And it dwells, too, within the paintings in which I tried to hold its beauty. The Twelve Scenes of Mt. Geumgang (金剛十二景) are a small fruit born within this time and space. Time shared with me — and so, twelve scenes.

  Spring, summer, autumn, winter — the twelve meetings of earth and moon changed Geumgang's beauty, and I longed to paint what they held. The memory of sharing that changing time by the measure of the moon, and the beauty of the space-time meeting Geumgang in the days to come — may it meet my paintings once more.

  [[center]]Paintings of Mt. Geumgang

  [[right]]Shin Jang-sik (Professor, Kookmin University; Painter)

  1. The Tradition of Mt. Geumgang Painting

  Paintings of Mt. Geumgang are countless — from the Goryeo monk No-yeong's Buddhist 〈Painting of Kṣitigarbha〉, to Gyeomjae Jeong Seon's 〈Geumgang Jeondo〉, the album leaves of Kim Hong-do, the many minhwa, and modern works such as Haegang Kim Gyu-jin's 〈Mt. Geumgang〉 and 〈Chongseokjeong〉 (painted after a sketching journey by order of Emperor Sunjong during the colonial period) and Sojeong Byeon Gwan-sik's 〈Samseonam〉. Mt. Geumgang painting, in particular, is a sanctuary in the history of our painting — the place where, from Gyeomjae Jeong Seon onward, our own aesthetics were established by sketching the beauty of our land from the actual scene (silgyeong). The inspiration for our painting in our age, made from our own, must surely be sought here.

  2. Division and Mt. Geumgang

  And yet since the division, not a single painter in the South has painted Mt. Geumgang. Even from imagination and materials, would it not be good to attempt Mt. Geumgang painting anew at this moment? With this thought I began, and from my 1993 solo exhibition through 1998 I have presented five solo exhibitions on the theme of Mt. Geumgang. In truth, my experience as assistant art director for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1988 Seoul Olympics gave the initial momentum: from interest in the formal vocabulary hidden in folk subjects — cheongsachorong, drums, gongs, flags, Gyeongbokgung — I worked under the theme of "Arirang." Afterward, expressing the animation and vitality dwelling in our land through subjects such as cockscomb, wild grasses, the pine, and Bukhansan, I came naturally to think: if so, why not paint Mt. Geumgang, the sanctuary of our painting? That simple thought was the beginning of my Mt. Geumgang painting. Considered in the pictorial context of Mt. Geumgang as well as in its cultural-political weight, the "Mt. Geumgang" rendered by a painter of this age, who confronts the unrelenting reality of division, is yet another story of unification.

  3. Mt. Geumgang Found Again

  Now, having met Mt. Geumgang several times, perhaps that animation and shinmyeong (exalted spirit) will seep into my paintings as well. There remain many places I have not directly seen — Chongseokjeong, Singeumgang, and so on — but perhaps the shinmyeong and vitality our people carry are now possible within Mt. Geumgang paintings. Will a time not come, in the future, when the division of our nation is overcome and Mt. Geumgang is reborn as a symbol of the nation? Then I shall see it to my heart's content. I hope, too, that some measure of this shinmyeong and vitality will be expressed in my paintings.

  4. Ideational Mt. Geumgang Paintings

  1993–1998 — Painting Mt. Geumgang without having visited carried no small number of regrets. Yet I could not erase from those paintings the hope that one day I might go. This work, begun long ago, was accompanied by research on Mt. Geumgang painting as a pictorial value. The works of that time, of which one could without exaggeration say they were ideational sansu (the East Asian landscape painting tradition), were thin in the connection between actuality and form, and drew doubtful looks from those around. My efforts to overcome this point appeared as research into old Mt. Geumgang paintings and the gathering of photographic materials, but a landscape painted without on-site experience was inevitably, perhaps, a painting in the head rather than in the heart. The black-and-white photograph from my 1996 solo exhibition catalog — me looking off into the distance with a cigarette — quietly shows my position standing at the clear fork between ideational sansu and true-view sansu (jingyeong sansu). A painter standing before the wire fence of the armistice line carries the air of one who longs for, or foresees, crossing it soon for Mt. Geumgang.

  5. Realistic Mt. Geumgang Paintings

  I approached Mt. Geumgang as a symbol and have now met its actuality. To paint the mountain yet to surpass the order of so-called representational sansu — that of merely transcribing the mountain — may be my principal task. Yet I have sought to step out of that frame, toward reading the actuality of Mt. Geumgang. The Mt. Geumgang paintings after my visits to the mountain differ in many ways from those before. First, ideational sansu can now turn into jingyeong sansu (true-view landscape). My recent works are jingyeong works of Mt. Geumgang, made on the basis of materials gathered by my own sketches and photographs on site. What I mean here by "the turn from ideation to true-view" is the process of finding "the union of actual landscape and painting." To speak — through Mt. Geumgang — of the animation of nature and the people, and further to take up concretely the contemporary and on-site (the situation including division) — this is the singular possibility that my painting cannot abandon. It is the work of attaining, through the union of symbol and actuality, an authenticity that runs through life and art.

  6. Prospects for Mt. Geumgang Painting

  Mt. Geumgang is my Mt. Geumgang, and our nation's Mt. Geumgang. I hold this hope: that one day, painters from the South and the North together may paint Mt. Geumgang on its very soil, debate our art, and exhibit in Seoul and Pyongyang — would not our symbol thereby be made still more precious? Would it not be possible to meet through the sensibility common to our people? Not meeting an empty mountain devoid of people, but meeting the mountain together with its people — the joy then would be greater still.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

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