1.
Every artist desires the final 'THING'. The world which naked potbellied Kong, Sung-hun is looking at is one that has been caricatured and broken with piles of his internal portraits ranging from 'Las Meninas' to Daumier's solitary 'Self-Portrait'. The cognition that the artist is funny and the world is on fire before the artist is the way Kong, Sung-hun loves his life. If life could be generally defined with 'birth and aging together with illness and death' - I don't think it is not possible at all - we are left with the way of 'joy and anger together with sorrow and pleasure'. A dog which looks like a pig and one which does like a penguin are looking at us while seated within the holy and desolate field which is almost like the abyss of the sea. And from there, they seem to make irrelevant remark while pretending to be ignorant of the sorrow which past through the anger. What we cannot understand is the fact that snow still falls and we feel that is beautiful. Is it from appealing to such pleasure to heal and reconstruct this broken world? It is from there that painting starts to speak and that we can acquire time-horizon.

2.
I am optimistic. What keeps me optimistic is the word, 'time-horizon' that novelist Bok, Gu-il, I believe, concocts in his article. For me, it sounds better than 'historical point of view'. Isn't it like that we are standing in the open field of time? What is virtue in Kong, Sung-hun's work is that he strenuously tries to think about the way painting can speak out again and that he reminds us that painting is still one of the ways to love the world. While painting whines in front of the world, artists is being broken enduring such whimpers. In fact, I really want to see that. Creating art is a kind of extreme pleasure. To fear the very pleasure without being overwhelmed by it. Artistic conscience of not boasting about that pleasure. Good sense of being humble about this attitude. And yet devotion to love this world which keeps him working.
Even though I cannot put it in words, the final 'THING' is likely as such and beyond such. Kong, Sung-hun's painting is telling us how beautiful the eyes of a dog and how blessed we are with night.

By Hwang, Sei-Jun / artist