I was unable to understand the status of the picture at first sight. I couldn’t believe that a person who was tied to school trying to live together with others with the same fluency of language, there is a language in the world, however inadequate it is for describing the world, and who always has to depend on this language when buying things to eat, reading and remembering—that this kind of person was really considering escaping from that very language. I regard this as an obvious escape by a person who couldn’t believe what was happening in the world and perceived these unbearable things more sensitively than anyone else and who had determined not to use language agreed upon by the rest of us who are living together.

We habitually ask what a work is before we examine the results one by one and contemplate the traces of the artist’s consideration. That is to ask instead of being committed to the work what the work means, what it is talking about, or at least what it belongs to in front of the strange work which is compared to a field without a road and a unmeasurable well. It seems like a determination to know the work’s meaning before being absorbed in the spacious field that opens up suddenly, the landscape of clouds, or a child’s smile. The question is one which asks for an answer in language. It is a translation of a picture into a written language like a hidden picture (or hidden prose)? Then what about the remaining part which is not caught in the net of language? Is it just a secondary part, subordinated to convey the message, a box to hold the message, or an artist’s excuse?

The ecstasy which a work provides to the viewers is a kind of “A-ha” experience which is achieved by their own sensitivity and wisdom. It can be explained with language, but it also includes experiences that cannot be stated. Our problem is that such an intellectual and sensitive game of ecstasy which has replaced the peripheral satisfaction of vision or the skill of handcraft does not do justice to the work, or else it is done only in a stereotyped and conventional dimension. Like a cross word puzzle with a prize in the newspaper, the answers of the game are kindly attached to the work to “help the viewers understand.” The viewers mistakenly think that the have overcome the difficulty of the game by themselves, which is like riding a bicycle with training wheels, (or being disappointed by the lack of intellectual challenge), and the artist tries to believe that be might fortunately communicate with the viewers through his kindness. “This work express the crisis of modern people, it reveals the contamination of the ecosystem; it renews our identity and the Oriental spirit—“List the messages that the artist and viewers give and take. They are almost like multiple choice questions. What is the meaning of “communication” made hastily in a closed circuit which states and listens just repeating what the viewers already know? When no answer is found in the existing list, “the problem” is understood as the work being wrong. The viewers can’t begin anything by themselves. They just feel defeatism and try to compensated for this failure by unplugging the monitor. Such receivers have only one channel, and the correct answers provided by the channel are composed by language. That is the poverty of our art. It is just a rumor that art is an original language system different from written language, and there seems to be no available channel for art’s exquisite grammar and its delicate vocabulary which is adequate enough to read off the images of a work’s story. As a result, art is spoken and governed by the language of texts, its eloquence which is loud, logical, and fluent, and has many pitfalls.

The sculptures and sketches of Chung Seo Young put forth the world, the “inexpressible” world. She says, “I think in pictures (not in written language).” Her works as fragmentary pictures compose a strange scene and an inexpressible accidents as if we were dreaming and remembering the past. The ‘answers’ of her work are in the space between the lines, avoiding the net of language and multiple choice questions and stereotypes. The message between the lines demands to be read by “the eye of one’s mind’ prior to the stage of language. But the stage before language is not a patchwork done at random. The characteristics that distinguish these works from surrealism which puts the body in the unconsciousness, or the liberating gesture of post-modernism’s “Anything goes”, or the superior gesture of the answered questions is the refined inner order system. By observing her working, we can see that most of her energy and time are dedicated to discerning delicate nuances and setting up a relation between such chosen things and dramatic things which cannot be added or subtracted. Behind the sculptural form which is a strange combination of seemly trivial things lurks the strictness and delicacy of conventional sculptors who seek the essential essence. That creates an invisible inner form, giving a special strain and fascinating aspects to these work. This can be regarded as inconvenient as if a right-handed person were commanded to write with their left-hand. But the artist does not provide any motivation to get rid of this inconvenience in the work. Not because the artist does not know a plausible explanation to answer multiple choice questions, or the sensual and dramatic form that may attract viewers, but because the artist believes that this would mean a return to a closed circuit governing language.

Chung Seo Young once explained that her works are a movement of coming and going from the unrealistic to the common, from the very abstract concepts to concrete forms, and again from the concrete language of daily use or diagrams to a state of extreme unusualness. I created this work in terms of movement of coming and going between language and pictures, between the visible and invisible. We might wonder what she was doing coming and going between those two spots. Yes. Though it, a path will be made. It will create small reads which make people who previously couldn’t understand the ideas of Chung Seo Young and me who started this kind of art at the end of the road because we were disgusted with the inconstancy of a time when vaguely answered questions were popular. We will trod this road in this manner and wonder where this road will end. It just lakes time.