Jaeyeol Han

These two works form the recto faces of a recto–verso diptych.
4041932x446582_Pigment Bar on Canvas_41x32x4cm_2025

Imago: The Structure of Concealment and Revelation

When I first encountered the two canvases connected by hinges, I intuitively perceived them as sculptural. The form of the covered canvas, reminiscent of a book cover, evoked the notion of a shell. When closed, the back of the canvas—its textured, impasto surface exposed like an exterior skin—emerges as a shield. When opened, the front presents two anonymized faces confronting one another, containing relatively clearer and more explicit information on the inner surface.

The structural nucleus of this work hinges on the concept of imago. In Latin, imago carries a dual etymology: it signifies simultaneously the imago of an insect (its complete, mature form) and the death mask (the form of death). This duality—complete form and death's visage—proves apt for revealing the inherent contradiction of painting: presence and absence coexisting, the living already departed. The two hinged canvases constitute not a simple diptych but a quadriptych, wherein both front and back surfaces function as constitutive elements of the painting itself. Through this structure, I sought to expose the tension between the inner surface (visual image) and outer surface (material trace). On the canvas's reverse, I employed Pigment Bars—solid oil paint I have produced since 2016 and used as primary material in my series Passersby and Bystanders—to attempt a more primordial, sculptural approach to painting's materiality and its traces.

This painting was produced for the and is currently on view at

Left Panel of Triptych / Bystanders, Three Bodies / 220 x 190cm, 3 pieces (220 x 570cm, HxW) / 2025

Bystanders, Three Bodies unfolds across three large-scale canvases, each inhabited by entangled bodies that evade stable identification. While each panel appears to contain three to four figures, the exact number remains deliberately ambiguous. The bodies are not discretely rendered but rather merge and dissolve into one another, producing a visual condition in which corporeal boundaries are porous and identity is relational rather than fixed. Limbs slip across bodies, contours overlap, and the very distinction between self and other collapses into a collective density of form.

Digital images resolve ambiguity technically. Zoom, contrast adjustment, filters make the indistinguishable distinguishable. The physical experience of Three Bodies refuses such resolution. Changing light and adjusting angles do not dispel ambiguity. This is not technical limitation but ontological condition.

The open structure of three panels formalizes this. Bodies are not fully contained within frames. Arms are severed, portions of figures disappear at canvas edges. This acknowledges the impossibility of completion.

The problem of representation is here rethought as material process. Representation is neither abandoned nor naively restored. Instead, representation itself is understood as the interaction of paint, canvas, gesture. Meaning emerges from matter's arrangement.

Yet is the maintenance of indeterminacy always productive? It may also justify the impossibility of decision—and therefore action. The ambiguity the work sustains can be liberating and paralyzing simultaneously. It renders the taking of clear positions impossible.

Center Panel of Triptych / Bystanders, Three Bodies / 220 x 190cm, 3 pieces (220 x 570cm, HxW) / 2025

Bystanders, Three Bodies unfolds across three large-scale canvases, each inhabited by entangled bodies that evade stable identification. While each panel appears to contain three to four figures, the exact number remains deliberately ambiguous. The bodies are not discretely rendered but rather merge and dissolve into one another, producing a visual condition in which corporeal boundaries are porous and identity is relational rather than fixed. Limbs slip across bodies, contours overlap, and the very distinction between self and other collapses into a collective density of form.

"How many bodies are there?" The work refuses to answer this question. Counting presupposes the identification of discrete units. But units here prove unstable. Following one figure leads to its merger with another. Which torso an arm belongs to cannot be determined.

This impossibility is not technical failure. It reveals that counting requires specific conditions—sufficient distance, clear boundaries, stable forms. When these conditions go unmet, individualization, identification, and classification collapse.

The title "Bystanders" proves paradoxical. A bystander maintains distance. Yet the bodies in the work have no distance. The title questions the viewer's position. Before a work 220cm high and 5.7m wide, can the viewer remain a bystander? The work surrounds the viewer. Standing before the central panel, the flanking panels invade peripheral vision.

Moving closer reveals detail but loses the whole. Moving back gains the whole but blurs detail. No proper viewing distance exists. Every distance permits only partial vision.

The bodies in the work are intensely involved. But involved in what? Is their entanglement solidarity or the consequence of compression? The work does not distinguish, and perhaps cannot.