Drawing Dialogue in Seoul:
Hoi-Rim Lee—Nothing Extra, 2019

Pencil drawing on the founder of Culture Foundation for OCI Museum Hoi-Rim Lee’s calligraphy, Korean handmade paper, Traditional mulberry paper, Acrylic stick, Ribbon and Fabric
120 x 31.5 cm

As a successful entrepreneur, Hoi-Rim Lee had lacked for nothing during his lifetime. Did he yearn for a purer level of spirituality when writing calligraphy? Or, would he, like me, still have many questions about life? I was quite curious about his state of mind at the time of writing “身分無物.” The curiosity leads me to want to let all life activities return to the purest beginning—nothing, I decided to paste a very thin layer of Korean paper over the whole piece of the finished work, including the calligraphy, pencil drawing and mounting fabric.

And lastly, I left a short paragraph of text in the work to have a dialogue with “身分無物.” On the Korean paper, I wrote with pencil, “At age 10, I told my father that I wanted to be a penniless artist when I grew up. I would die on the street. Please do not come to save me because van Gogh was like that.”