Project name

Metamorphosis Topography of Absence

Value

Art Academy Düsseldorf, GER

Title

Ghost Ways

Category

[Work]

Year

2023

Once, I set out on a journey back into my past—but the past stayed where it was, while the place itself had already withdrawn. The sudden farewell from a beloved person made even that place, to which I might have returned, disappear, leaving an immeasurable emptiness behind. I have translated the memory of that endless walking, sunk in deep grief, into a desolate landscape—a landscape in which the world beneath my feet seemed to give way. The space is covered with raw earth, gathered here and there into small mounds. Scattered upon it lie objects—fragments of a body that has lost its owner. They are no mere empty husks, but traces of a presence that has retreated, still carrying the warmth of the earth within them. In these objects, Kafka’s metamorphosis is reversed: it is no longer the human who becomes a creature—rather, what once served the human as an extension of the self now remains as a hollow, anatomical debris. Some rise out of the earth, others withdraw into it; they linger at the threshold (seuil) between the buried and the visible. The crunch of earth and stone beneath the visitors' steps is at once a remembrance of solitude and a proof of existence. In this topography, every step becomes a physical inscription; for a moment, that trace rewrites the place that has vanished. The large window opens onto living trees. It stands open. This opening is neither a mere partition nor a simple mirror: it is a passage through which time keeps flowing, even while the room stands still. The tension between the motionless earth inside and the living world outside is not redemption—it is the precise shape of grief: life goes on, even when we are not yet ready. A rhythm that allows no grief erases human time. The feeling of loss cannot be deleted like data, nor neatly archived; remorse and longing remain, and their distillation demands a time that resists every efficiency. In a present saturated with exhaustion and exploitation, this slow walking itself becomes a practice—a walking that empties the head, that brings thoughts to rest, that offers loss a space in which it may finally be what it is. Whoever enters this space is no longer a fixed observer—they become a ghost: a being that moves freely through time and space, that stands upon the loss of the past and at the same time keeps the possibility of the future in view. Ghosts do not submit to physical separation. The moment the audience begins to wander through this topography of absence, the space of empty fragments fills with living trajectories of movement. Ghost Way is not a way back—it is the most honest passage we can find through loss. The map of absence is only completed by the warmth of those who walk it.

material medium / dimension / Year

material medium / dimension / Year

Acrylic, mixed media, and collage on canvas / 200 x 190 cm / 2023

이진석
뒤셀도르프에서 작업 및 거주

DE

02:44 PM

© Jinseok Lee 2026

이진석
뒤셀도르프에서 작업 및 거주

DE

02:44 PM

© jinseok lee 2026

이진석
뒤셀도르프에서 작업 및 거주

DE

02:44 PM

© Jinseok Lee 2026