ARTIST’S NOTE | 17
Aesthetics of Discrepancy, and Resonance
2023 노트에서 발췌
The direction our will aims for and the actual flow of life often subtly diverge. At the point where we reached out expecting results, nothing comes to fruition; instead, the true fruit quietly ripens in unexpected obscurity. This discrepancy is not merely a failure, but rather evidence that a realm beyond our control always exists.
I once believed that aspiration was synonymous with purity. However, as the will to achieve something intensified, my vision narrowed. Purity too easily turned into desire, and desire into obsession, imprisoning the agent within the confines of purpose. When the act is suffocated by the weight of the result, the subject loses itself.
The conclusion reached after countless trials and errors is clear. What matters is not to cease acting, but not to tether the self to the act. The attitude of striking deep roots into the earth without craving results—that is the quietest dignity a living being can demonstrate. Only when moving with obsession eliminated does the act acquire vitality as itself, rather than as a tool for a purpose.
In this context, the concept of ‘gratitude’ must also be redefined. Gratitude is not a product of emotion created by feigning positivity. Rather, it is a mode of understanding that begins only when acknowledging one’s limitations in moments when things do not go as planned. Paradoxically, moments that deviate from my plan prove that I am not an isolated solitary being in this vast world, but am breathing together within an invisible order. Therefore, that acknowledgment is not a defeat, but an expansion of existence.
When the vision, once narrowed by chasing purposes, opens up and one finally faces the world as it is, the unique rhythm of the world, flowing at a speed different from mine, begins to be sensed within.
What we face at this moment is not the joy of achievement. It is simply the moment when the time lingering inside me and the time flowing outside meet to finally form a single harmony. The subtle tremor, which I would never have heard without the discrepancy, passes through me, and the imperfect self is placed entirely within the great order of the world.
Art is the phenomenon that occurs when that tremor permeates the subject. The scope I can intervene in and the scope I cannot; my finite will and the infinite flow of the world. At the moment when those two breaths are precisely attuned, life and art are completed within a single flow called tranquility.