Apparently it was not her goal to make a functional vessel. Not thinking much, the woman pasted and smeared clay to shape it into a pleasantly round lump. The lump of clay must have felt like a gooey and impervious mass of flesh, which probably led her make gaps as if the mass were in need of open holes for breathing. Because otherwise, one could also say that a sealed mound of earth would be just an equivalent of a grave. Coming to this thought, I start picturing that the pottery might contain a person crouching inside.

The terms indicating detailed parts of a pot are named after body parts. It has a ‘mouth’ opening, with a ‘lip’ that bulges outwards. Right below the lip, the ‘neck’ starts, connected to the ‘body.’ A pot with a narrow mouth looks like breast. Its convex body that narrows toward the top protuberates with a mouth that looks like a nipple. A baby in oral phase should be able to find pleasure when it suckles breast, even not feeding, because the nipple stimulates its oral mucous membrane. Producing pottery without knowing what to conserve inside could be also based on a similar mechanism.

The woman firstly places a pot on one side of breast, then squeezes it in the middle of breast. The once squashy lump of clay went through the process of firing and airing and hardened, to become a skeletal mass to support the breast, namely a hanging part of flesh. The woman, noticing the unfamiliar lateral tension, could have put pottery on each side finally to create the constellation of flesh-pottery-flesh-pottery-flesh-pottery-flesh alternating horizontally with the support of her arm bones and ribs.

After a heavy rain, soil under the house gains its flesh-like, mushy consistence. Thus people build embankment to prevent its collapse. Each end of the to-be-built embankment gets fixed with two standing wooden panels, between which layers of stone stretch a line, after repetitive pasting and smearing of cement. Finally, with the two wooden panels supporting from each side, the structure of cement-stone-cement-stone-cement-stone… gets constructed. As wind dries up the paste and the tension from each side pulls the structure upright, its frontal surface will reveal a natural pattern like stone growing out of the flat cement surface. The woman seems to assume that the number of stray cats increased, after the embankment was finished.

The model is sitting on a chair, with one of her palms heading up, resting on her thigh. The thumb is slightly curving, neither in tension nor relaxed. As if the thumb were stained but you were not in a situation to wash it off, in this retraction, a slight sense of discomfort is noticeable. The other hand hangs casually below the back of the chair, not leaning on the top but on the side of it. Both hands are not completely submitted to the effect of gravity, yet maintains the awkward state of contraction.

Another model with long hair is in a red blouse. In contrast to the former model, she fully leans her arm onto the back of the chair, and looks definitely more relaxed. The texture of her clothes and hair looks smooth enough to flow down along to the curves of her body. The model’s head is somewhat lifted obliquely, probably contracting her muscles unconsciously, to keep her face uncovered by the hair falling down.

The third model with bobbed hair wears glasses. Nevertheless, her eyes are unfocused, thus I assume she is deliberately staring at the void. The corners of her mouth rather fall downward, yet she doesn’t look angry but she isn’t really smiling either. The model is crossing her legs and sits turning to the side to a certain degree, apparently trying to avoid the awkward moment of facing the other woman who is drawing her. All three models show a facial expression that could be described to suggest more than nothing but less an actual one.

A mountain peak protrudes like neck bone. Soil and plants cover it like a skin. The rocks are either fully exposed or look like bones covered with a thin and transparent layer of skin. The neck bone turns to backbone then connects to a shoulder joint, delineating a remarkable ridge. There, where soil accumulates filling up the gaps between two larger masses of rock, seeds of plants land to start rooting. Luckily, when the surface of the rocks is rough enough, the soil won’t be washed away by pouring rain and stay, to let the root stick to it.

Pasting and smearing by hand, the powder will absorb the moisture from skin, making the skin drier. The paste will adhere in-between the cracks of bulging joints, blood vessels and wrinkles. Since the paste doesn’t go off well from the rough hand, it becomes easier to smear it onto another surface.

From an abandoned vase, a rubber tree still grows on the side street. Its fine roots obstinately grasp the soil, and it turned to a skeletal volume in the shape of the vase. In the meanwhile, the leaves that were rolled like a horn, unfold, revealing their skin shining like leather. With such vigor, it could even survive from the cement of the embankment.

A twig on the beach, buried under the sand, infallibly looks like a skeleton. Its edges and joints are worn out and salt and sand polished it pale. The woman would have been frightened, even though she knew it was only a piece of twig. The woman then started to gather the twigs together with the pile of pottery, like a ritual matching the pre-found skulls with their scattered skeleton, recollected.

The angry wind from the sea shapes the hanging blanket into a skeletal undulation. Still drying, it entangles with the wind, reminding a deceased body becoming shrouded.

To spread stories yet to weave them back together, the woman who’ve been scattering the pebbles like in the tale of Hansel and Gretel, is finally confronted with the following question: can an image that doesn’t aim for representation still bear bone and flesh? Like breasts and pottery or cement and stone, could it create a force capable of contracting and releasing strengths? Would it be able to reveal the tension like the posture of amateur models did? Could it expose the bones of mountains, oceans and winds? The woman smears and pastes uncanny mass of color over the landscapes that by now assimilated to a homogenous surface of color after the contour of things got eliminated. The thick color looks similar to synthetic fabric burnt half way, to rubber seal or a bird flying away too fast. In any case, it adds up a sudden tension onto the landscape that could melt down quickly. This tension is a tautness, a contraction, a spasm created through a pure incoherence that cannot be articulated. Her landscape points out this actual moment as the primordial cell division that makes the countless stories possible, of figures and things which painting attempts to represent.

Sohyun Ahn is curator and writer, in attempt to broaden the sphere of art criticism yet trying to avoid a writing that has no ‘impact.’