The Annunciation (central panels) – Art Poster (2026)

The Annunciation carries the Torso series into a subject Western painting has returned to for centuries. It depicts the two figures of Gabriel and Mary, surrounded by lilies, stars, and a vortex of bursting pink blood. First painted in 2014, it has continued as a series since 2026. At the end of Mamoru Oshii's animated feature Ghost in the Shell (1995), there is a scene in which a vision of an angel descends and the protagonist and the Puppet Master merge into a single new being. To me the scene looked like an Annunciation. It made me think that the Annunciation might be not only the announcement of Christ's conception but a picture of the very moment something comes into being. As I continued the Torso series, I felt it needed a monumental work, on a larger scale than the torsos, to announce its beginning. The Annunciation was a fitting subject to place at the center of my first solo exhibition, NU-TYPE (Makeshop Art Space, Paju, 2014). Four canvases are used, but the two central panels join into a single image, so the work reads as three. It follows the triptych structure of religious painting while, I hoped, also looking like the open spread of a comic book. Oil on canvas; the two central panels measure 194 × 261 cm together, the side panels 117 × 91 cm each. On the left of the central image, the winged figure is Gabriel; on the right is Mary. The two resemble each other so closely that only the wing tells which is which. Identifying a figure by a single attribute is a method the iconography of religious painting has used for centuries, and it is also how animation tells its characters apart, by hair color or a prop. Each figure is missing one arm and one leg, and the two face each other, turning, with the explosion at the center of the picture between them. In a traditional Annunciation the light comes down from heaven; in this painting it bursts out from the center. The whole picture may be one great explosion; it may be something born of the relationship between the two figures; it may be an explosion from within. What mattered to me was that it comes from the center, not from above. Pink blood spreads out from the figures, and around it lilies bloom, stars glitter, and liquid bursts. Amid all these drops of blood, flowers, and stars, I wanted to paint a moment in which something explodes and is made at the same time. The figures in the work are nude. Just as the protagonist of an anime glows naked as she awakens at the climax, and just as a transformation sequence wraps the body in light as the clothes vanish, I wanted to show the Annunciation as a decisive event, yet a moment that does not belong to this world. The blond female character is an image of beauty that recurs in Japanese manga. Hers is a face of no nation, neither Western nor Asian (what is called mukokuseki), and as an idealized type of beauty she is like classical sculpture. I gave the angels on the side panels different hair and skin colors, wanting to paint as many types as I could beyond the standard bishōjo character. The ground is white with a hint of cream, so that the whole painting would read as pure and bright. In Western painting the lily is a symbol of purity; in the context of manga, it can be read to mean something else as well. Because the same iconographic motif is read differently across periods and cultures, I find it fascinating to set those readings side by side in a single picture and let them collide. Until now I have concentrated on creating many different types of work; now I want to take those types up one by one and explore them in greater depth. Since 2026 I have returned to the Annunciation, painting it as a series in a wider variety of compositions. The angels from the side panels of the first painting have become small, round, cartoon-like figures scattered across the picture, and the explosion that once burst from the center has turned into lilies and those angels blossoming and spreading over the whole surface. The Annunciation II is a picture with no top or bottom; it holds together even turned upside down. Within it, Mary and Gabriel collide, rising as if they were falling. In The Annunciation III the two figures cross past each other, facing in opposite directions, yet they look at one another. I have always painted the Annunciation with a cyclical composition and form in mind. Both works (2026, oil on canvas, 227 × 182 cm each) were first shown in Everyday Images: How They Address Us (Seoul National University Museum of Art, Seoul, 2026), and new works in the series are now under way. I have not decided what kind of birth these paintings depict. At the center of the picture the two figures turn slowly, and within that turning something is being born at this very moment. Only that moment remains on the canvas.