I have tried to look outside, in order to explore where I can reach beyond the present reality. I try to capture images of geographical environments around me, but they soon lose their specialness. By keeping the safe distance from the subjects/objects, I refrain from being too sympathetic or over identifying with them, and only express the image as a situation on the canvas. All the images are represented as abandoned areas and empty spaces, where time will no longer be reconstructed. The aura of old landscapes and spaces is replaced by artistic effort, where there is no room for dry facts to get in.

While I was in the one-year residency program, I painted images of the surrounding environment on canvases. Most of them are thin and dry images of old factories. Just like all the other landscapes, the images allow me to be aware of the phenomenon incurred by the remainder of my memories, which is very different from the facts. In the context of art history, becoming a topic of art, and being selected as an image of art, are related to the semiotic sign system through which we understand things. Therefore, there is no perfectly independent view that is completely mine and mine alone. I only express the perceived image on the canvas, and it is perceived as one painted work by viewers in their own perceptual contexts. Painting is only about traces of scattered afterimages. Trying to conceptualize my own work with practical reasoning and logical background ideas seems almost an impossibility – that is why, when I try to write an artist statement, I cannot help feeling incongruous and out of place, like being dressed up in fancy ill-fitting clothing. No matter how hard I try to develop the ideas, I wonder whether I could bring anything meaningful by confronting the pace of reality with some sensory logic or reason of my own, besides simply showing an image or a scene. I only hoped that my artworks, which have already become part of the past, will be another set of my meaningful mistakes.