UNTITLED

2021

Lacquer on Concrete

112 × 162 cm

Seoul, South Korea

Certain materials seem to possess a consciousness of time.

Lacquer is one of them.

It cannot be hurried.

It cannot be persuaded.

It cannot be conquered through effort alone.

One must submit to its rhythm.

Untitled emerged shortly after Tae's return to Korea during the pandemic. Removed from the studios, communities, and structures that had defined his years abroad, he found himself confined to a modest rented house, isolated from the certainties that had previously shaped his practice.

Yet isolation produced another condition.

Silence.

Within that silence appeared lacquer.

Historically, lacquer protected objects considered worthy of survival. Temple architecture, ritual vessels, mother of pearl cabinets, ceremonial furnishings, and treasured heirlooms received its protection. Such was its rarity that old expressions compared a drop of lacquer to a drop of blood.

Its value was measured not only in scarcity, but in time.

Rather than applying lacquer to something already considered valuable, Tae directed it towards concrete.

A material of foundations.

A material of construction.

A material rarely associated with reverence.

The encounter between these two materials became the basis of the work.

Extensive experimentation followed. Surfaces were altered. Ratios were tested. Failures accumulated. Only through repetition did a method gradually emerge.

Then came the waiting.

Layer.

Silence.

Layer.

Silence.

Layer.

Silence.

More than twenty applications slowly accumulated across the surface. Time ceased to function as duration and became material itself.

At first glance the work appears black.

Yet beneath the darkness resides lacquer's original colour. A deep crimson slowly reveals itself under light, as though the material remembers its own origin.

The work functions simultaneously as painting, sculpture, and mirror.

Not a mirror of appearance, but of condition.

Concrete and lacquer.

Modernity and inheritance.

West and East.

Construction and preservation.

Opposing histories brought into fragile coexistence.

Untitled marked the beginning of Tae's sustained engagement with lacquer.

Yet beyond its material significance, it remains a portrait of a particular moment.

A period of uncertainty transformed into contemplation.

A period of waiting transformed into understanding.

A surface upon which time itself was permitted to settle.