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MARU-Point one Taken by the Wind
First Conversation
Lucy: What I see in your drawings isn’t imagery, but movement—a trajectory of time and silence.
Sangghil: We often believe what we see is the whole truth. But in reality, we can sense and feel far more than what is visible. I don’t set out to draw a “form.” What I try to reveal are the events that arise when my senses meet the qualities of material—the tension, breath, tremor, and pace of that encounter. If Cézanne painted the world as seen through his eyes, I attempt to express what I sense and feel. Sensation, after all, always precedes any "correct answer."
Lucy: There’s a kind of temporal stillness in your drawings. A sense of perception that arrives before words—and lingers, quietly. Is there a particular work or moment that made a strong impression on you?
Sangghil: A few years ago, I stumbled upon Robert Morris’s 《37 Minutes, 3879 Strokes, 1961》 online. I stopped instantly. I didn’t need an explanation—I instinctively understood what kind of work it was. The scattered, irregular strokes, their chaotic rhythm— they embodied speed, motion, and the presence of time. It was as if Morris had approached a question I myself have been grappling with for years.
Lucy: Morris once said about his “Stroke” series that the brushstroke was no longer a tool for creating an image, but the residue of repeated physical acts—a record of bodily time. The gesture becomes trace, and the trace piles into rhythm—until the canvas becomes a device that remembers the body.
Sangghil: Yes. That’s precisely what stopped me in my tracks.
Lucy: Now that I think about it, your drawings feel like they resonate with that very idea—but in a different register. Where Morris imprinted traces of physical exertion onto the canvas, you seem to gather those same traces… more slowly, more quietly, inside silence.
Robert Morris, 《37 Minutes, 3879 Strokes, 1961》
Sangghil Oh, untitled(detail), 2011,
oriental ink & pigment with water on paper
Lucy: Exactly. If Morris’s work moves through time with sweat and rupture, your drawing feels like a body paused within time—listening through stillness. Where his is a memory of exertion, yours is the lingering of trembling, of hesitation. Both are records of the body—but yours might be capturing the particles of sensation that remain even after the body has disappeared. It feels… quietly mysterious. And beautiful.
Sangghil: I want the drawing to record not an outcome, but the unfolding and overlapping of
sensation and process. And in the end—yes, I still hope it looks beautiful.
Lucy: So the lines interact—some seeping into others, some resisting. And the body grows deeper within those intervals. I’ve never quite heard someone describe drawing as a slow accumulation of gestures waiting to respond.
Sangghil: It’s not about technique or form, really. It’s about how perception works. I think conventional habits often obscure what our senses are actually detecting. Seeing beyond what we think we see—that’s not so difficult. It’s just a matter of loosening one’s grip on familiarity.
Lucy: Your drawings seem to involve other senses too—like touch, proprioception, even resistance or rhythm. They don’t just ask to be looked at. They feel like something that is listened to through the body. Is there a particular drawing you’ve done recently that captures this temporal layering or bodily rhythm?
Sangghil: There was a piece that came from an education program I developed for children
—I began mixing ink, pigment, and water intuitively, and drew not with brushes but with my hands, pushing the mixture with my palms and fingers. The movement left behind traces of rhythm and emotion that I could never replicate again. That’s the thing—these drawings cannot be repeated. They simply happen.
Lucy: I’ll remember that—“drawings that cannot be repeated.” They’re like memories made physical. Like a moment that passes and never returns, but leaves a residue behind.
30th, July, 2020, MMCA
3rd, Aug. 2020, MMCA
untitled, 1989, root, fish head etc.
Sangghil: In both 2010 and 2020, I was asked by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Korea to re-install my 1989 work. Even though I had already shown it once, I couldn’t relax during the entire process. Especially in 2020, when the tree root was finally installed, I felt something pulling at the back of my neck as I was leaving the space. days after, I returned to the museum and spent hours making changes. Only after sweating through those final touches did I feel at peace.
Lucy: Many might call that “reproduction” or “re-installation,” but what you’re describing feels like a summoning—a calling forth of body and time.
Sangghil: Yes. That root wasn’t simply a “material.” I found it abandoned on a street in 1988 and brought it to my studio. I lived with it for more than a year, watching it, waiting. One day, while trying to move it, the root suddenly flipped upward. At that moment, I thought—this is it. Something clicked. From that moment, everything flowed. Back then, I used to borrow objects from nature for my installations, and once the exhibition ended, I’d return them to where they came from. It wasn’t performance, or obligation. It was simply… my way of relating to the world.
Lucy: So that act of returning—that wasn’t just an afterthought, but a part of the work. It sounds like you were entering into a kind of agreement with the material, or the world itself.
Sangghil: It wasn’t about owning nature, or shaping it. I was simply borrowing it—so I could reveal something. Art, to me, is about opening a temporary rift—a space where things meet: object and body, time and place. And once that meeting ends, everything should return. Even drawings are no different.
This is where the first conversation of MARU ends.
You may now see and hear the second conversation—
with a different time, a different body, and a different silence.
Contact: sangghil.art@gmail.com