The Structure of Emptiness and Fullness — Relational Aesthetics Between Rationality and Perfection
Ahn Hyun-jung (Art Critic)
Bae Samsik positions his painting at an Eastern equilibrium of relationbetween rationalityand perfection. His quadrangular matrices no longer read as static geometry but as fields where order and freedom, balance and vibration, co-sustain—a contemporary enactment of hŏ-sil sangsaeng(虛實相生), the interdependence of emptiness and fullness. Here, emptinessis a reservoir of potential rather than absence; fullnessis motion condensed rather than substance fixed. It is within this interval of oscillationthat his pictures breathe. In the recent works, this breath manifests not as a loss of center but as an expansion of narrative. The network of squares branches into polyphonic stories. Most crucially, the incised linear reliefsthat traverse white reservesare not surface effects but sediments of time and labor—at once archaeological traces of an old siteand premonitions of structures yet to come. Tilting with light, these ridges slow down the gaze; the picture builds outward like architecture, no longer confined to the flat. Where Western relational aesthetics(Nicolas Bourriaud) foregrounds social connectivity and participation, Bae’s relationality is ontological and introspective. His grids act as living circulatory systemsin which self and other, time and memory interpenetrate. The process resonates with wu-wei(無爲) and xiangsheng(相生): harmony arising from effortless coexistence, and sincerity of labormeeting the rhythm of mind.
Over more than seven years, the “square” has matured into a bridgebetween intellect and emotion, East and West, plane and volume. Today the work is distinctly architectural and sculptural in its planar logic: rectilinear insistence and restrained pulses of fields form a discipline that, while allowing a bird’s-eye freedom of view, converges toward completeness—not as closure, but as completeness-in-process, a perfection within freedom. Laozi’s dictum—“The Dao gives birth to One, One to Two, Two to Three, Three to the myriad things”—remains quietly operative. This is an open order. The void is vital, not negative; the incised line is memory, not division. Within their fine vibration, time, matter, and consciousnessintersect. In Merleau-Ponty’s terms, to see is to be intertwined with the flesh of the world(la chair du monde); Bae’s lines and hues are not representations but mutual penetrationswithin that flesh. Equally marked is a 2020s aesthetics of individuality. Rather than aligning to external isms, Bae consolidates a self-forged stratum of sensibility. The Korean notion of teo(site/ground)—the lattice of hanok, the logic of patchwork, the openwork of ancient pottery—meets modernity to produce a refined Korean fullness. In this, Bae proposes a relational perfectiondistinct from Western monochrome’s reductive purity: integrity achieved through coexistence, not subtraction.
There is also a poetics of silence. Zhuangzi’s “great wisdom appears slow; great music is faint” reads here as an ethics of rhythm and reserve. Rational structure receives the pulse of life, approaching perfection yet refusing finality. It is precisely in this productive incompletionthat the profound Eastern aesthetics of relationunfolds. Wittgenstein reminds us: “The world is not the totality of things, but the totality of facts and relations.” Bae’s pictures are that statement made visible. They are at once a logic of formand a map of feeling, where Eastern wuand Western beinglayer into coexistence. In his current practice, the center holds as the story expands; white voids and incised lines stratify time; architectural exactitudefuses with personal sensibility. Between rationality and perfection, Bae locates the serene, continuous rhythm of relational harmony—the most quintessentially Eastern beauty.
