The absence of my mother I had experienced when I was around the age of 3, imprinted on my mind the endless loneliness. This loneliness made me a precocious child, and equipped me with sensitivity and keen memory. The memory of the couple of years that I had anxiously waited for my mother in an empty room dominated my childhood, and made me grow up into an unaffable and eccentric person, at least until I got much older and started to understand things. In the meantime, I documented and picturized the colors, movements and vividness of nature with the sensibility I was granted. After my mother returned, we carried on together in a single room. She had a job of making hanbok. My brothers and I slept well under the bright fluorescent light, while the sewing machine’s drilling sound went on all night. When she came back home with the roll of hanbok fabric and unfurled it in front of us, I couldn't take my eyes off it. I was enchanted by its rich dazzling hues, wrinkles and gloss. Most of my studies consisted of observations, records, and drawings. My writings were about what I experienced rather than what I read, and I made drawings of what I observed. It seemed unconventional at that time, but it turned out to be beneficial for my learning ability as well as friendships. Growth is such an atrocious, sorrowful, and pathetic word. At least that’s how I think of it. My adolescence was quite eccentric, my social experience was premature, and my lengthy education wound up in an unfamiliar city (that made me a stranger). Looking back on it gives me a headache. In fact anyone would feel the same looking back on one’s life. Therefore we tend to recall selected memories based on our own frames of criteria. The frame of my own takes form of the physical space within the Universe as well as the loneliness of being just a tiny existence living the Time. Such repetitive cycle of loneliness has become the ground for my callosity toward pain. The Universe is inconceivable in its size and interminable in its formation. It is composed of a myriad of stars and planets in various dimensions. The abrupt extinction of our Earth will leave no impression on it. Amidst such enormousness, the best we can do is to cherish every moment with humility, not insisting to live forever with arrogance. Now I realize that if I've been faithful to those moments in any aspect, there will be no cause for regret. The diversity of nature, my cats, the expansive ocean and the fractals that fill up the world all make me lightheaded, just as the universe does, but I am still grateful. I am grateful to be alive, to be able to feel the senses I was granted. I am thankful to God and my mother for all the love I can share with the world. What I aim to present through my paintings are ‘ambiguity’ and ‘diversity’. Tiny, trivial things at a glimpse may look similar, but in fact they are all distinct beings. That explains why we are always touched by them. I was only a child when I, for the first time, felt through my little fingers the warm heartbeat underneath the wings of a tiny golden chick. Tears came out instantly with no reason. I wanted to protect that little chick. At other times, I was sickened by the thought that the world swarms with such tiny beings-smaller than persimmon leaves. Yet the small, delicate, and fragile things always seemed beautiful. I was once devastated by the adults’ habitual meat-eating. By then I usually made drawings of trees or flower petals, and was engrossed in them. Afterward I had to study the human history full of complexities, relationships, civilizations and philosophies, and my once peripheral interests were polished up into my ego. Eventually I came to the conclusion that ‘human’ is the core of everything. I wish there to be a balance. Whom I think of as myself, humans, and the earth all together is like a full package consisting of diverse history and civilization established over the immense nature, filtered by some selected frames. Even when considering the human history and the whole structure of it, I try not to exclude the details. Learning about the theory of Chaos or the Menger sponge endorsed my ideas and it felt like I have met a savior. I had been unfavorable about emphasizing a central topic, so it took me quite a long time to understand that my paintings also build up around a theme. A two-dimensional painting contains both the platitude of flat surface and an irresistible charm, while a sculpture offers a variety of perspectives. Consequently I settled a new form of display by combining the two. The details throughout the canvas are the enormous nature, the structure and architecture in the background are the human civilization, and finally the cat is myself or my relationship to the world.