The concept of peace always feels abstract and unfamiliar. It is like a longing that can't be caught. Thirty three years ago, I used to look up at the top edge of some wire fences while standing guard in the freezing winter. The wire fences, like thorn-bushes, looked as if they were slowly winding and whirling inside a canvas. Was the painter's consciousness awakening within me? What grabbed my attention was the mournful, tragic beauty of the wire fences' form, which helped me to endure the piercing cold and the stinging heartache of those days.

During the field trip to the demolished GP (guard post, the outpost in the DMZ), I cut my fingers while picking up a few remnants of wire fences that were scattered among the ruins, which reminded me of past wounds. The scars on our skin reflect the wounds in our mind. My work nowadays crosses the border between abstraction and representation. While my pieces during the last decade were drawn in order to forget painful experiences, the current series is more akin to the process of undressing an infected wound and taking a closer look at it—just like the wounded feelings I had attempted to cover up. While repeating the process of drawing, scraping off and erasing small wounds on canvases, I was faced with the unease which comes up when every feeling that had once been covered is revealed. The process of erasing and covering up canvases resembles the process of healing, in a strange way. What was left on the canvases in the end were abstractions, like traces of wounds.

I hope that the wire fences that used to be sharp can turn into the soft lines of an art that is liberating—just like our personal wounds, big or small, can be healed during the course of our lives; and I wish that any internalized divide, as well as the wounds in our minds, can be healed through the act of drawing.