arteles_catalogue_2014

INTO THE DARKNESS
For we begin to understand Nature only when we no longer
understood it; when we felt that it was the Other, indifferent
toward men, which has no wish to let us enter, then for the first
time we stepped outside of Nature, alone, out of the lonely world.
—Rainer Maria Rilke
Into the darkness
With an expectation to experience an everlasting night, I came
to Arteles in winter, a place of solitude encompassed by frozen
landscape. Falling leaves drifted into icy lake and evergreen trees
whispered beneath snow. Shadowy light brought everything into
an existence of featureless and colorless.
Even in snow days, I kept a habit to walk in the woods, along
the meandering trails. Once alienated to nature, I was deeply
attracted to the inherent power it contained and obliviously gone
further and further until the distant light finally faded out. In
impenetrable darkness, the wildness unknown to me seemed to
be enshrouded in confusion; nevertheless, as an ambiguity was
summoned, a sensitivity revitalized. Only through perceiving the
dark, the boundary between the internal and external became
increasingly amorphous, and eventually interchangeable.
Overwhelmed by the surrounding dark, I created four works
during my two months stay at Arteles to investigate the complexity
of indeterminacy and intimacy awakened in me. Incongruous
ideas about sublime or clarity, and my sentimental response to
darkness had generated a tension between losing and restoring
my identity. Nordic winter blanketed all in the gloomy light, yet
something mysterious about what was hidden and unpredictable
called for a return. Enlightened by darkness, an emotional
landscape revealed multifarious experiences and insidious
possibilities after a prolonged silence.