Seoul, b. 1989

Landscape Opens Into ‘The Returning Place’ My paintings explore how landscape opens into The Returning Place. I am drawn to moments that seem suspended—clouds before they dissolve, waves gathering, or a sky just before night arrives. These fleeting states appear to hold something not yet fully revealed. Recurring forms such as clouds, waves, moons, and horizons appear throughout my work. What first appears as landscape slowly unfolds into place. Through perception and lived experience, familiar scenes begin to reveal themselves differently. Rather than depicting real places, I paint the imagination waiting within familiar landscapes. In this sense, my landscapes are not destinations but thresholds—places where perception, memory, and possibility quietly overlap. My paintings move toward The Returning Place—a place that feels newly encountered yet strangely remembered, as if it had always been there.