I like driving eastward on the Gangbyeon Expressway in the middle of the night. I always take the far right lane, with the Han river right at my fingertips, and watch the city lights glimmering on the dark surface of the night’s waters. I’ve always been intrigued by the night scenery, especially that in Vincent van Gogh’s works – whether they are of a narrow path lined with cypress trees unwinding in the dark woods, outdoor cafe lit up after sunset, or stars sparkling against the night sky, they captivated my heart like nothing else before. Interestingly enough, I would remember these paintings of night scapes much more vividly, in so much more detail than I would ever an actual night scape that I actually saw. I believe visual encounter of the world through a painting than in reality can be much more powerful at times, as it has been for me with Van Gogh’s works, because of the complex and multi-sensual experience that it can provide. I stop to smoke a cigarette at the Hangang Park in Nanji near my temporary studio where I spent most of the summer to paint. Taking a night stroll at the park has become a regular pastime.

While in conversation with an art critic a few years back, I was asked why I chose painting over all other mediums. He asked me something to the effect, “Painting used to be the sole means of creating an image, but in the highly modernized world that we live in today, it has become a fraction of the vast variety of mediums an artist can use, many much more efficient, such as film and photography only to name a few. Its significance has withered to a point where we aren’t sure if we can even place contemporary painting and the traditional painting of the past under the same category. In this undeniable reality, what do you claim is the reason that painting should prevail?” I could not find an answer to this question that I myself could accept. Hence this question of “why I paint” has long lingered, and only recently I’ve come to a rather resigned conclusion: from the beginning I chose painting and that I can paint. I have always painted because I had to, driven by this feeling of destiny and inevitability that I always had deep within my soul, and therefore any debate on the efficiency and effectiveness of painting is utterly irrelevant. Equation of productivity cannot be applied to painting, or any form of art, to measure its value. To analyze the validity of painting, a tool of expression which has existed since the beginning of human civilization, in the 21st century, the right question to ask would not be “how productive” but “how beautiful.” Unfortunately for me and my fellow painters, the latter question leaves us in the middle of an even more complicated labyrinth. How beautiful is my painting?

A Woody Allen quote from ‘Manhattan’ comes to mind, comparing life to resort food that lacks both quality and quantity, that life is “full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it’s all over much too quickly.” I head home, feeling the autumn night’s cold air on my back. Backlights of a slick sports car leave behind a long backlit shadow as it speeds off on the empty road, while streetlamps glisten through the thick leaves. The bright city lights sparkle like stars in the dark and then slowly fade away, dissolving into the wet air of the autumn night.
- Dong Wook Suh 

Courtesy of One and J. Gallery