Artist's imaginations become real as leaders climb sacred mountain together

By Woo Jae-yeon

SEOUL, Sept. 28 (Yonhap) -- Painter Lee Jong-gu had a surreal experience earlier this month when he watched the scene of his latest painting became a reality -- the two leaders of South and North Korea walking on Mount Paekdu side by side. The moment was a step toward inter-Korean reconciliation, and an actualization of something Lee had imagined.

His painting was inspired by the first summit between President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in April. Lee hoped that the peace momentum would continue and imagined the scene of the two together on the Korean Peninsula's highest and most sacred mountain.

As an artist, however, he wasn't so gleeful about his painting becoming a headline image.

"The painting itself, I think, loses room for imagination. It is less fun," Lee told reporters during a press event for his solo exhibition, titled "Agora_Spring is Here," at Hakgojae Gallery in Seoul on Friday.

"Many people expressed amazement at what they believed was my skill to quickly capture the moment on canvas," he said, referring to the common misconception that he had painted the piece after watching the landmark visit by South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to Cheonji, or Heaven Lake, on top of Mount Paekdu, last Thursday.

The piece in question is part of his "Spring is Here" series on display at the exhibition, which the artist worked on for the last two years.

Lee's recognition mostly comes from his lifelong dedication to documenting on canvas Korean rural life and farmers from the 1980s, though recently he has gradually expanded his interest into a wider array of themes.

Since April 16, 2014, when the Sewol ferry sank off South Korea's southwestern coast and took the lives of more than 300 people, many of them high school students, the artist has been more fueled by a sense of duty to record what is happening to people around the country.

For the "Let's Go to School" series, he painted realistic depictions of the teenage victims of the Sewol sinking, with a futile desire to salvage the sunken ship and bring them back alive.

It took him three months to complete the series last year in an abandoned elementary school on Imha Island near the passageway of the doomed ship in the Yellow Sea.

"I have my studio in Incheon, but it just didn't feel right for me to work on the series in my comfortable studio," he said.

He believed the tragedy initiated a seismic change that led to a change of South Korea's leadership and ultimately put the divided nation on an "irreversible" path to lasting peace.

The exhibition, he said, is the culmination of his artistic mission and responsibility to reflect and testify to the current zeitgeist, even though such work might lack aesthetic value.

"Artists are those who record their times. Through documenting them, I feel alive," he said.

Born in 1954 and raised in a rural setting in Seosan, South Chungcheong Province, he studied fine art in Chung-Ang University in Seoul, where he now teaches art. In 2005, he was named Artist of the Year by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art.

The exhibition opened Friday and runs through Oct. 21.

jaeyeon.woo@yna.co.kr
(END)