What follows is a supplement to Statement I, concerning the order of painting and language.
The reason I do something as nonsensical as painting squares within squares is that I do not want to start from language. Today, art is subordinated to language. First comes a statement or opinion, and paintings, sculptures, or videos are then made as its materialization. In this way, the work falls into predictability, leaving no room for development or transformation. Moreover, as someone who also writes haiku, I cannot help thinking: “What can be conveyed with language should be conveyed with language alone.”
What is interesting, however, is that even when a painting does not begin from language, people still find some kind of “meaning” in the surface. It is like seeing a human face or an animal form in a stain on a wall. Ten viewers will give ten different interpretations. As I continue to paint mere squares, I myself have come to see my own concerns and preferences within them—these simple squares. Starting from the painting, language is spun out.
In the past, Proust wrote of Vermeer, Valéry of Degas, Barthes of Twombly. Today, artists chase after philosophers and curators. This order must be reversed. I do not want to paint from language as a starting point. I want to paint paintings from which language is born.
