Dr. Kim, Young-Jai / Art Critic, Philosopher

Kang Suk-Jean has been drawing landscapes of Korea for years. His works are none other than an ode to Earth that Kang will leave behind someday in the future. His landscapes, mainly drawn from the bird's eye view, seem to have the Creator’s gratification immanent in them, as ‘Got saw how good it was’ in the Old Testament. Furthermore, the world in his landscape stands for the paradise of here and now rather than the other world referred to in religion such as the heavenly world of extreme happiness in Buddhist thought, though it takes after the heavenly paradise. The notion that all religions around the world comes to form the ideal world is the main theme of his works.

Kang’s landscapes are full of oxygen for living creatures by the means of using an abundance of green colors. Green means oxygen to him. The fresh air at dawn is full of oxygen. Watery oxygen sprouts and grows the living. Thus, Master Kang is well-known as an artist who uses the color of green the most. However, is oxygen only in the greeneries and green mountains and rivers? It can be found in all his paintings, such as those of Tibetan plateau and flooded European city. This is because his utopia is somewhere else beyond visible phenomena.

With these ideas, what are his works like? On Kang’s canvas evolves the wide view seen from the high. Kang compares his view to that of an astronomer’s looking down Earth.

There are familiar watery rice paddies, mountains and rivers, and people’s houses or huts on Earth and also in Korea. There are also scenes of foreign landscapes which abound in fragrance of humble life. His viewpoint resembles that of the Almighty God, but his works contain humane feelings, such as pleasure, anger, love and joy. It could be God’s viewpoint seen in man’s eyes or man’ viewpoint as God’s descendent looking down Earth in an affectionate way. There is a saying that we should watch paintings and fighting scenes from the farthest distance possible. However, it would be more appropriate to recommend that Kang’s works be appreciated from the 2ⁿ distance. So to speak, to appreciate his art pieces fully, it would be the best to watch his works from five or six-meter distance (the double of two or three-meter one usually good enough to appreciate paintings), or from far away, somewhere in heaven.

Looking down on all mountains and waters on Earth with affection…that is Kang’s landscape paintings. The land is a planet named Earth which he is currently dwelling in which he will miss so much someday when he is due to bid farewell to this life and return to a star he came from. His good feelings of sleeping, dwelling and drawing the beauty of the land, as Korean ancestors have done all the time, reveal themselves in his scenes. Therefore, such motifs in his landscape paintings can be understood in that Koreans regard death as return to the heaven or to the place they came from.

Chun Sang-byung, a poet, says in his poem. Return to Heaven, “Returning to the Heaven after strolling this world, I will say it was so beautiful.” Kang’s art works are his praise for nature, life and moreover man, as he draws with genuine love toward nature by being part of nature. Hymns of nature take place when the artist becomes completely part of nature and draws the feelings received from it. Hymns of life include the ecstasy of living in accordance with the province of nature. Hymns of man are to draw humane reflections and memories like this, what destiny makes us get well together at this moment here on this Earth leaving behind the stars you and I were dwelling …

The world of his landscape expands with the mind looking it down with the eagerness of missing the star he has left behind. The artist understands that his world is that of being contemplated by heart and mind with eyes closed. He imagines and expands the universe and Earth through his eyes of heart-mind. At this moment landscapes, human beings and all the humane fragrance could be grasped vividly on the canvas.

However, being contemplated by heart-mind with eyes closed is not intended to block real life, but aims to understand Earth actively with humane feelings of joy, anger, sorrow and pleasure. Everybleak reality, for instance, a flood-drowned city, is surely miserable for the victims, but we can also find some beauty in it when we see it from the viewpoint of Great Nature. It is the creation of Great Nature and the best of art pieces. As if the Heaven might have stamped its face on the water of the flood-drowned city since the Almighty God loved man so much.

Reality is reality, but Kang sees the world hidden behind this bleak reality. His landscape represents the world of total wholeness into which small parts are integrated through a more comprehensive vision, not just being collected on a big canvas. Also, his landscapes embrace the whole vision without losing subtleness of small details.

The world on his canvas is not accumulated by copying the real world but creatively projected through his comprehensive heart-mind. In short, it is the world of perfect harmony combining wholeness and parts, though it can be felt as the atmosphere in his paintings. It is the world of assimilating the great providence of nature into human life.

Kang has his own world as an artist where he shows affection toward every leaf of grass and every piece of rock. As a result, Kang’s large-scaled scenes are reconstructed in his visional totality despite his thorough grasp of each natural world and he is expanding his psychological scale to the cosmetic scale as if he is keeping vast lands in this world on his canvas. All the lands in his sight would be incorporated into his art world like Vipassana in the Buddhist terms.

In this respect, his sight is interpreted as clear intuitive insight into physical and mental phenomena. This insight means comprehending everything of this world rather than just seeing them as they actually are. In other words, it could be like what is called a clairvoyant sight which penetrates far off although a clairvoyant does nothing but contemplate in his room thanks to his thorough knowledge of all under the sun. This is a Buddhist interpretation of sight.

It is a Buddhist saint Kwan-in that embodies Vipassana in an effective visual form. Vipassana stands for Kwan-in’s, that is to say, Avalokiteshvra’s merciful eyesight. Avalokiteshvara was the one who Sudana, namely Sunjae, a Korean young pilgrim met at the Avatamsaka Sutra. Sunjae is a well-known seeker as a model for Le Petit Prince--Little Princeby Antonin de Saint-Exupery. Kang’s theme of the planet he has left behind is none other than the little prince’s viewpoint.

The world of Avatamsaka is that of perfect harmony with no sense or reason. Sublime universal principles probably exist in that world. However, even a particle of the dust embraces the whole world, as Ui-sang (the great Buddhist priest of Unified Silla, an ancient Korea dynasty) preaches.

So does Kang’s art world. He draws some parts of nature, within which the whole universe resides, and furthermore the world of nature he is to return someday later. Meanwhile, the great universe is condensed as a dot and the accumulated dots compose mountains, waters, and roads.

There appears to be roads in Kang's landscapes which are similar to pilgrims of Sunjae the Young Pilgrimand the Little Prince. The roads which always appear in his landscapes are floating lines. They lead to the unknown somewhere. Fantasy is there. It is all the better just because they are unknown. Something mysterious is waiting for us at the end of the road since we do not know where. Once we hit the road, we are eager to journey to its dead end. This road is not only that of the Little Prince and Sunjae the Young Pilgrimbut also that of Kang's pilgrimage with heavy burden of painting tools. The journey on this road is his life-time longing and destiny as an artist.

The little prince travelled around the stars after abdicating his star to the gigantic Baobab tree. Sunjae the Young Pilgrim searches for truth giving himself up and visits 53 KalyaaNGamitra, the wise in the gaNGDavyuuha, Dharma World of Avatamsaka Sutra. At the end of the pilgrim, he was led to the gate to the Sukhavati, the extremely good heaven shown by Samanthabadra Bodhisattva. If the prayer of Samantabhadra stands for the door to the Sukhavati, the young pilgrim would be the key to Heaven. The little prince completes his travel around the stars ironically through his death by being poisoned by the snake.

Likewise, Kang Suk-jean has been drawing landscapes travelling all over the country and also the foreign remote areas which resembles our mountains and waters. His works includes his yearnings to return to homeland. His pilgrim is not always to the dwelling places. Only if he could communicate each other, he does not care whether it is the living or the dead, human or non- human.

Kang enjoys talking about the story of the cemetery, which he is sure to visit whenever he is in Petersburg, Russia. The tombs in the cemetery are taken good care of as a park near by in the middle of the city. There are some life-time photos of the dead and bunches of fresh flowers. He shares conversation with the dead, walking around among the tombs. At this moment he feels how comfortable the world beyond is and realizes that the other world is in the nearest distance with the living people.

Conversation is a direct call to connect the artist and the world. While it would be a small talk to have conversation with the dead by imagining their life-time looks, it would be active and vigorous to transport into his art studio the trees cut and tumbled on the ground to talk with them. Kang transfers onto his canvas the trees that are greeting and waiting for him on his way to the walk in the morning. One day, he finds that the trees, once singing hymns of life, are groaning wounded and tumbled on the ground, and then watching him with their sad eyes. This artist reflects that the tree logs are waiting for him in his studio after transporting them into his studio and washing their wounds. The dead trees could go on talking with the artist in his studio as if they were living. In that sense, there seems no difference between the dead and the living.

Every road in Kang’s landscapes, blocked at the first glance, seems to be connected to unknown somewhere. It seems to be disconnected in the scene, but definitely it could be connected behind the scene if seen from a different angle of sight. Who is there beyond? There exists the great nature, the creator of universe.

Since the road of life and that of death are connected to each other in his landscapes, even the barren landscape of Tibet give warm sentiments to the viewer due to the roads in it. It is not the road seen at the Tibetan funeral in which dead bodies are thrown to eagles in return, but the road by Korean notion of the other world as if the lover might be waiting at the end of the mountain passage, expressed in a Korean lyric.

Where is the other world? He writes in his notes, “At some later moment, In a far-away planet, I will reminisce about the land I have left, all that I have cherished, And only for that moment, I do draw.” Thus, we reach to the conclusion that the land he has left behind is none other than the Earth, where he has lived and will miss someday when he returns to a certain star after this life. In this way, hymns of Earth whisper to the viewers in an artist’s landscape paintings, that here is your planet Earth. 

The art critic Kim Young-Jai has been seeking the archetypes of Korean art and culture and giving his best shot for wider publicity of excellencies of Korean art.He received the doctorate degree at Dongguk University with his research of Koryu Buddhist paintings andAvatamsakaPhilosophy, and now he teaches in Seoul National University, Korea University, and Sukmyung Women’s University.He has been following the evolution of Kang Suk-jean’s art world and activities, and wrote the commentaries for his first and second exhibitions.