Myogilsang, Inner Geumgang

2007 · 162×97 cm · Korean Paper, Acrylic on Canvas

Image size 6.6 MB

Exhibitions

2012 〈Samādhi〉 · Space Sun+ (Samcheong-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul) (Solo exhibition)

Citation

Preparing for the 〈Samādhi〉 Solo Exhibition — At Work in the Kookmin University Studio (2012)

A photograph of the artist at work in his Kookmin University studio while preparing for the 2012 〈Samādhi〉 solo exhibition (Space Sun+, 15–27 Nov 2012). It records the studio where the exhibited works took shape, and is linked from each exhibited work's page to show that process of preparation.

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Related materials for this work

Text Review 2012-11-15 · Choi Tae-man

〈Pilgrim on the Road, or One Who Searches for the Path〉 — Choi Tae-man review (2012)

Seeking (三昧)
Having visited Inner in 2007, Shin Jang-sik presented, alongside landscape paintings rendering the beautiful terrain of Inner Geumgang — Manpokdong, Bodeokam, Pyohunsa, and the site of Jang'ansa — the work 〈Myogilsang of Inner Geumgang〉. This Myogilsang (妙吉祥), designated by the North as National Treasure no. 102 in cultural relics, is said to have been carved by the monk Naong (懶翁), who restored Myogilsang Hermitage in the late Goryeo period. With the Buddha image alone reaching 15 meters on a cliff face 40 meters high, it is a vast work — a representative example of cliff-carved Buddha images of the Goryeo period. Because Myogilsang Hermitage once stood at the site of this cliff Buddha, the work is called Myogilsang, a name referring to Mañjuśrī Bodhisattva. Yet judging from the figure's facial features and the mudrā suggesting the welcoming gesture (來迎印), this is, evidently, an Amitābha Tathāgata.
Even from the time of his -themed works, Shin Jang-sik had been making works that revealed Buddhist features such as the lotus and the maṇḍala (a sacred geometric diagram in Buddhist tradition); in his 2001 solo exhibition he had shown his interest in Buddhism through paper-cast sculptures of his own meditating figure. The Myogilsang must be, I think, the first time he painted a Buddha image. Yet, by drawing alongside the Buddha visitors who had come to Inner , this work might better be read as a painting of the actual landscape that contains the Buddha rather than as the Buddha image itself taken as theme. This time, however, he has set his heart on painting Buddha images. From the right-hand attendant Bodhisattva — the smiling, childlike attendant of the Maitreya triad excavated at Samhwa-ryeong in Gyeongju — to National Treasure no. 83 (the pensive bodhisattva), the cliff-carved Bodhisattva in pensive posture at Sinseonam on Mt. Namsan in Gyeongju, the stone seated Tathāgata at Mireukgok on Mt. Namsan, as well as bodhisattva images from the Maijishan Grottoes of China and Buddha images excavated from Gandhāra sites in Pakistan — the Buddha images he has painted span varied regions and periods. Yet within his works, the principal image of the Seokguram, representative of Korean Buddhist sculpture, is not to be seen. The reason is that, concentrating on the theme of for this exhibition, he attended to Buddha images that best show the state of samādhi.
Sammae (三昧) is a transliteration of the ancient Indian Sanskrit "samādhi," but according to its meaning it is also translated as jeong (定), simil-gyeongseong (心一境性, the one-pointedness of mind), or ilsim bulran (一心不亂, the unstirred unity of mind). It is, above all, a concept that condenses the practice of Śākyamuni; "ilche-jebeop chesyeong pyeongdeung muhuiron sammae (一切諸法體性平等無戱論三昧)" — the of the equal nature of all dharmas without idle elaboration — which Śākyamuni Buddha spoke in answer to Moonlight Boy's question in the Candrapradīpa Samādhi Sūtra (月燈三昧經), can be said to show well the realm of samādhi. Śākyamuni reached awakening through the practice of samādhi, and taught that in samādhi one can penetrate the truth that all existence is without substance and is mere phantasm.
Even before leaving home, Gautama Bodhisattva is said to have practiced meditation. After leaving home, through Brahmin teachers such as Āḷāra Kālāma and Uddaka Rāmaputta, he reached the spheres of nothingness and neither-perception-nor-non-perception, but realized that genuine awakening could not be attained by such means; after extreme ascetic practice, he entered deep meditation beneath the Bodhi tree and at last attained the way. Thus was the path that, transcending the self, reached the realm in which all dharmas are without self (諸法無我). So Shin Jang-sik, by painting again the Buddha images of bodhisattvas and Buddhas absorbed in the deepest meditation, seeks to draw close to that realm of samādhi.
The Wayfarer on the Path
Once Shin Jang-sik said of himself, "My fifties in life are those of a wayfaring practitioner." For my part, I do not think he defined himself as a religious practitioner in the strict sense. This can be confirmed in his own words: "I have come to think that the way of the artist is also the way of the practitioner, and that painting too is an instrument of practice. What was I looking for, wandering East and West, past and present? If I can express even a little of that light, that would be enough. I want to sing 'the Arirang of hope' in painting." The practitioner he speaks of is, in another phrasing, "one who searches for the path."
He has walked countless roads. Among them, the Tibet travel from Lhasa to Kathmandu, two travels to India, and in 2011 the Silk Road pilgrimage from Xi'an through the Hexi Corridor, across the Pamir highlands, and on to Gandhāra — these became occasions that more deeply etched the figure of the practitioner that already dwelt in his heart. Through these travels he met Śākyamuni, the true wayfarer on the path. Was Śākyamuni not the one who was born on the road, attained the way in the forest where the road lay, walked countless roads bringing sentient beings across in compassion, and entered nirvāṇa (liberation from the cycle of suffering in Buddhist teaching) on the road? Among the many Buddhist scriptures, the one that best shows the "wayfarer on the path" must be the chapter "Entering the Dharma Realm" (立法界品) of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra. Sudhana (善財) — the practitioner and seeker of that chapter — did not set out merely to find bodhisattvas alone, those who, seeking awakening above and saving sentient beings below, embody the vow. Among the fifty-three good friends he met were not only bodhisattvas, monks, nuns, and laywomen but also Brahmins — formerly excluded by Buddhism as outsiders — wandering ascetics, sages, gods, and worldly people such as kings, elders, doctors, ferrymen, and householders' wives; even boys and girls, and a woman known as a courtesan. Thus Buddhism teaches that one can meet countless people on the road of seeking, and that through them one can reach the way. The openness and innovativeness of Buddhism — which does not separate subject and object and seeks freedom from attachment to self (我執) and to dharma (法執) — must be the dependent arising (緣起) that led Shin Jang-sik to walk the road.
The road Shin Jang-sik walked was the road Hyecho (慧超), who had gone from Silla to the Tang for study, walked in seeking the Dharma. Before him, Faxian (法顯) and Xuanzang (玄奘) took that road. There were also others — the Goguryeo monks Seungrang (僧朗) and Damjing (曇徵), who studied in China during the Northern and Southern Dynasties; Gyeomik (謙益) and Hyechong (慧怱) of Baekje; Ariyabalma (阿離耶跋摩) of Silla — who set out from the Korean peninsula for China. Ariyabalma, having set out from Chang'an the Tang capital, made pilgrimage to Buddhist holy sites in India and studied the Vinaya and Abhidharma at Nālandā, but did not return to Silla; he is said to have passed away at Nālandā. Today, with travel programs and developed means of transport, one need not stake one's life on the road as the seeker-monks of old; yet Shin Jang-sik, walking the very roads they had crossed, was able to meet not only Śākyamuni but also predecessors such as Kumārajīva (鳩摩羅什) and Marananta (摩羅難陀). Such experience is what led him to paint Buddha images.
Buddha-nature Spreading Through the Universe
Then why does he, of all things, paint Buddha images? And why is he so attached to Buddha images — already well-known cultural heritage and objects of worship? From the time the Buddha image first appeared, the norms of the "32 marks and 80 minor characteristics" were applied to emphasize the transcendence of the Buddha; these norms must be observed whenever one makes a Buddha image as an object of worship. Moreover, since the sacred features of the Buddha are not to be carved carelessly by anyone, they must be made with utmost devotion and the pure heart of a practitioner. But the Buddha images Shin Jang-sik paints are clearly not objects of worship. His painting of Buddha images is only the outward manifestation of the reverent awe (畏敬心) toward the Buddha that he, as an artist, has carried in his heart. Even so, questions remain.
The Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra (大般涅槃經) records the answer Śākyamuni Buddha gave Ānanda, who asked at the time of his nirvāṇa how the Tathāgata's body should be tended:
"Ānanda, do not concern yourself with the tending of the Tathāgata's body. Ānanda, devote yourselves to the root, be absorbed in the root. Do not be careless in the root; abide diligent and self-driven. Ānanda, there will be wise Kṣatriya and wise Gṛhapati who hold a pure heart for the Tathāgata, and they will tend the Tathāgata's body."
As his end drew near, Śākyamuni, with the final teaching "Monks, all formed things are subject to decay; do not be careless, strive on diligently," entered parinirvāṇa. When at last Śākyamuni Buddha entered nirvāṇa beneath the two sala trees at Kuśinagara, his disciples adorned the body with flowers and tended it for a week. Disciples who awaited Mahākāśyapa — who, hearing of the Buddha's nirvāṇa, was hastening to the funeral — after a week moved the body to the Makutabandhana temple. When Mahākāśyapa arrived, under his direction the disciples cremated the Buddha's body according to the traditional Indian funeral rites and gathered the relics. Despite the final teaching not to grieve at Śākyamuni's nirvāṇa nor to concern oneself with the tending of the body, eight kings, elders, and disciples who came from each region took the relics, each erected a stupa, and enshrined the relics within. At this very moment, Buddhist art too can be said to have begun.
Later, Aśoka of the Maurya dynasty is said to have gathered the relics of Śākyamuni Buddha again and erected eighty-four thousand stupas throughout India. After a period of "aniconism," in which the Buddha's presence was symbolized by the wheel of dharma (法輪), the Buddha's footprint, the Bodhi tree, and the like — without a figural Buddha image — Buddha images in human form appeared around the first century in the Mathurā and Gandhāra regions, during the Kushan rule of India.
Gandhāran style, influenced by Hellenism, Rome, and Persia, and Mathurā style, formed within the Indian sculptural tradition, each developed their own idioms; and at the Gupta dynasty — which, after the fall of the Kushan dynasty established by a foreign people, was re-established by Indians — they entered another era of remarkable flourishing. In the museum at Sarnath, where Śākyamuni delivered his first sermon at the request of Brahmā after his awakening, there are beautiful and refined Sarnath-style Buddha images of the fifth-century Gupta era. By that time Buddhism had already, through Aśoka's vigorous missionary policy, spread throughout India and on into Sri Lanka, the southern and western Asian regions, and the Hellenistic realms. The Kushans, who had invaded India from the region of present-day Afghanistan, converted to Buddhism and held it with particular devotion; under King Kaniṣka's grand patronage and missionary policies, it was transmitted along the Silk Road to China.
According to record, our country received Buddhism in the 2nd year of King Sosurim of Goguryeo (372), when Fu Jian (苻堅), king of Former Qin (前秦), sent the monk Sundo (順道) with an envoy. Since Sundo is said to have brought Buddhist scriptures and Buddha images with him, one can say that Buddha images were transmitted to our country through him. Of course, the records in the Samguk Sagi or the Samguk Yusa describe the formal acceptance by the ruling class, so Buddhism must have been received earlier among the common people. In the 1st year of King Chimnyu (384), the Indian monk Marananta came through Eastern Jin (東晉) to Baekje and transmitted Buddhism. Silla, too, after the painful martyrdom of Ichadon under King Beopheung, received Buddhism with difficulty; yet as we can confirm from the record that "in Seorabeol, monasteries and pagodas were as numerous as wild geese," it quickly established Buddhism as a state religion and built great temples such as Hwangnyongsa and Bunhwangsa. Through the Goryeo period, our country took Buddhism not only as faith but as governing ideology, building countless monasteries, Buddha images, pagodas; transcribing sutras and painting Buddhist images.
Such cultural heritage appears in Shin Jang-sik's works as motif and theme. Having traveled through Lumbinī, Mt. Pragbodhi, Bodh Gayā, Sarnath, Rājagṛha, Jetavana, Veṇuvana, Vaiśālī, Kuśinagara, Nālandā, together with Sāñcī Stupa, Ajantā, and Ellorā — and having encountered Buddha images at museums across many regions — he renders, within his paintings, not only Korean Buddha images but also images of the Gandhāran and Mathurān styles, and from the Gupta-era Sarnath style, those in the realm of .
But what meaning would there be if he merely reproduced these Buddha images? What would distinguish such imitation of what already exists from the painter — as Plato spoke of in the Republic — who imitates the phenomenal world, itself an imitation of the Idea? To resolve this problem, he imagined the Buddha-nature spreading through the universe. Consider, as one example, a work in which behind a Gandhāran Buddha holding the dharmacakra-mudrā — the gesture of the first sermon at Sarnath — yet showing the features of deep , he renders "Cheonsang Yeolcha Bunyajido Gakseok" (the early-Joseon engraved chart of the heavens, 天象列次分野之圖刻石), and to either side places the celestial maidens (bicheonsang) rising with fluttering robes from the Yongjusa (龍珠寺) Brahma-bell — a configuration in which the two flanking celestial maidens transmit Śākyamuni's first sermon (the words of compassion) into cosmic space; this can be called a visual embodiment of the Ubiquitous.
This Buddha-nature spreading through the universe rises still more dramatically in works that place the Buddha's head within an oval nebula, or in triptych-form works. A work in which the surface is divided into three — on either side, the lithe celestial maidens of the Sacred Bell of King Seongdeok, and at the center, half-length, National Treasure no. 83 (the pensive bodhisattva) with a subtle smile holding the realm of liberation beyond all thought and the wish to save sentient beings — shows a structure in which the bodhisattva suddenly emerges from a deep abyss like a black hole in cosmic space stitched with countless constellations.
Pictorial considerations also occupy an important place alongside such meaning-bestowing. To bring out the actuality of the Buddha images he has himself seen, he neither alters nor distorts the form; as seen in his painting of the attendant bodhisattva of the Maitreya triad at Samhwa-ryeong, he applies paper pulp to the surface to evoke the texture of granite and renders the shadows. The granite texture of the Buddha images is thus emphasized, while the celestial maidens are rendered in planar, linear fashion, and the candles cut from prints are pasted on — embodying a surface in which reproduction and expression, the three-dimensional and the planar, the figurative and the abstract coexist in harmony. The same can be confirmed in the work where Buddha images of the Northern Wei period from the Maijishan Grottoes are placed facing one another. As if a decalcomania, this work — projecting each other's forms — not only evokes in its content the Buddhist thought of non-duality (不二) but achieves, through the sense of space on the surface, a visual effect of forms dissolving into cosmic space. Toward the center of the surface the forms vanish, and one feels an audiovisual space in which faint, abstract waves of light pulse and are drawn inward, or waves of sound resonate outward.
From Sarnath to Mt. Namsan, and Back to Oneself
As he wished to be a wayfaring practitioner, Shin Jang-sik loves to travel. For him, travel is not merely a pause to escape the chains of daily life and recharge, nor a reward bestowed upon a hard-working self. He is one who searches for something, and when the object appears, he sets out on the road in order to remain absorbed in it. At Sāñcī Stupa he discovered the Śākyamuni Buddha of the aniconic age, expressed through the Bodhi tree, the footprint, the dharma wheel; at the Taxila Museum he found the Gandhāran Buddha images where Hellenism and Roman art met Buddhism. At the Sarnath Museum he encountered masterpieces of fifth-century Indian Buddhist art; crossing the Taklamakan desert he met the asceticism of countless seeker-monks who had died on that road. When he saw a cliff-carved Buddha at Gilgit in the Gandhāra region — where Taliban incursions might occur — what was he thinking? The travel we made together was by no means an ascetic ordeal. It might rather have been a happy time that fulfilled the romantic fantasy of the Silk Road.
After returning from the Silk Road, he went alone to Mt. Namsan in Gyeongju. Attending to the fact that reliefs such as the Seosan Maaebul appear different according to the amount and angle of light, he sometimes visited at different times of day. And not only Buddha images. To find the source-evidence (典據) for his work, he diligently studies Buddhism, so that recently the topics of his conversation are filled with Buddhism. It was the same when he painted before tours to it had opened. He collected, surveyed, and studied an abundance of materials related to Mt. Geumgang and reconstructed it on the surface. After the opening of Mt. Geumgang, this passion, through countless field surveys, also became the driving force that made him "the Mt. Geumgang painter."
Excessive passion can become attachment, but his painting of Buddha images, too, must be driven by some kind of vow-force (wonryeok, 願力). What might it be? He is not, drawn by religious faith, painting the Buddha as an object of worship. Perhaps he has taken the Buddha image as a means not for the image itself but in order to know the deep thought that dwells within it. Just as Descartes (René Descartes) did, he is aware of himself as one anguished over what he must search for. Because such a desire to know operates as a motive, his work carries an intuitive and at the same time analytic character.
From to to the Buddha images, there is no conflict or opposition in Shin Jang-sik's paintings. What he is searching for, as he himself has said, is "the Arirang of hope." Is not art just such a thing — searching for a light that cannot be declared in clear terms but rises faintly into view? To reach it, one may see the object as it is (), may concentrate (sati), and may even enter a state of supreme non-conceptual stillness, having released even that concentration (). The way of art and the way of dhyāna are different. That difference is what makes art rich, but in seeking, beyond the suffering of reality, that which is ultimate, there is something they share. Prajñā belongs not to Buddhism alone — is it not also needed in art?

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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 (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 '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
[[right]]Shin Jang-sik (Professor, Kookmin University; Painter)
1. The Tradition of Painting
Paintings of 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 , 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
And yet since the division, not a single painter in the South has painted . 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 — , 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. Found Again
Now, having met 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 Paintings
1993–1998 — Painting 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 (). 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 Paintings
I approached 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 (). 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 Painting
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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Text Artist's Note 2012-11-15 · Shin Jang-sik

The Mind, My Mind, Our Mind — Buddha-nature Spreading Through the Universe (2012)

That mind was the light of the world
The world is a life within a universe in which we live and perceive
The world is the fruit of the time we have passed through, and our deeds
Pratītyasamutpāda—dependent arising
A mind that cannot be spoken of simply
Mind
Does the world bend to one's wishes?
Even my own mind differs morning and evening
And when we meet bearing spear and blade, there is only struggle
We are the pulse of life
To the one who taught us the beauty of life until life is spent
I offer my thanks
To the Buddha-nature spread throughout the universe
In deep
I study

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Text News 2012-11-16 · Hyunbul News

Buddhist Enlightenment at Its Peak in 'Samādhi' Paintings

Coverage of Kookmin University professor Shin Jang-sik's solo exhibition 〈Samādhi〉 (Nov 2012 — Nov 27, Space Sun+, Seoul). Eleven works depicting the Buddha in , drawn from the artist's pilgrimage research across India, Pakistan, Tibet's Gandharan ruins, Gyeongju, and . The article traces how the artist's encounter with Myogilsangam relief at Mt. Geumgang led him into Buddhist imagery, and how Joseon star charts, Gyeongju Namsan pines, Dunhuang flying figures, and Yongjusa temple bells appear as backgrounds — positioning the artist as a 'practitioner on the road' in his fifties.
Coverage (1)

Hyunbul News 2012-11-16 · Jeong Hye-suk

Buddhist Enlightenment at Its Peak in 'Samādhi' Paintings
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