Frames of Torso

Between the Frames: Fragment of Torso is a series that repaints the Torso series on canvases divided in two or three, like the panels of a comic book. It was presented in my first solo exhibition in Tokyo, Frames of Torso (DDDART, Tokyo, 2025). From the moment I received the invitation, the most important condition was the form of the traditional house: a tatami room. While conceiving work to suit that space, I thought it would be meaningful to take the Torso series, which I had first exhibited in Korea, reconstruct it in the shaped frames of a comic book, and show it in Tokyo. I have returned periodically, since early in my practice, to making work with irregular frames and comic panels. After Danae I also painted a series of shaped canvases in Zodiac. Rather than changing and developing over time, my work is closer to taking out the things I thought of at the beginning and using them as each occasion requires. A single Torso image was divided and painted across two or three canvases. Most are existing torsos transferred as they were; some faces were newly painted to fit the panel. The canvases are divided along diagonals like comic panels and hung with a gap of a few centimeters between them. The image sometimes continues across the gap, sometimes shifts slightly, and sometimes the same image repeats, overlapping across two panels. I painted them thinking of that state as a single picture, like comic-book panels split in two or three. Most of the works were not large, and there was only one large canvas. The image of one Torso was divided between two horizontally long shaped canvases and one large vertical canvas, making Between the Frames: Fragment of Torso -01 (2025, oil on canvas, 2 panels, 30 × 90 cm each) and a large work of the same title (2025, oil on canvas, 180 × 110 cm). The two small panels hold the face, the large canvas the body. The large canvas is a single piece, but the place where the gap between panels would fall is left empty along a diagonal. I worked on them thinking that they could stand alone, and that when set apart in the exhibition space they would form a pair. I painted them anticipating where they would hang, such as between the alcove and the posts of the room, hoping that the wooden posts and lattices of the room would connect with the gaps between the canvases so that the whole room would read as a single comic page. As it was my first exhibition in Tokyo, I also brought existing works and showed them together in a separate part of the space. The rest are two-panel works, including Between the Frames: Fragment of Torso 01 (2025, oil on canvas, 2 panels, 40 × 90 cm each), and one three-panel work, Between the Frames: Fragment of Torso 05 (2025, oil on canvas, 3 panels, 91 × 19 cm each). The long side is about 90 cm, while the direction and proportion of the division differ in every one. The picture does not show everything. I am not sure that creative work has to contain everything. Sometimes a bold cut, as in a torso, is enough on its own. At some point I came to think that the shaped canvas itself is a torso. If those canvases are connected to one another, the gap between them can be filled by the viewer's imagination. I am working on new pieces with the thought that the space between one picture and the next, the gutter between one panel and the next, might become a clue for unfolding new images and new spaces.