Time, Body, and Silence
Sangghil Oh
Time-based artist | Body | Resistance | Trace | Silence
“What cannot be said—must be drawn, screamed, or scattered.”
SILENCE
Artist's memo / 8th July 2019
This choice of ink and traditional Korean paper was not merely about materials.
It is based on a reverence for the lineage of Korean true-view landscape painting—from Gyeomjae to Danwon, Sojeong, Cheongjeon, and Oksan.
I do not see this tradition as a past that may be discarded, but as a latent stratum of alternative possibilities for the 21st century.
Ink and paper are not just black and white.
They respond sensitively to water, producing countless expressions where material properties and perception intersect.
My intervention takes form through immersion, often channeled via breath, rhythm, and restraint.
These are not acts of representation, but drawings that begin where materials and sensibility speak together.
I see art as a neutral zone between myself and the world—
a structure where contingency and gesture are laid bare.
They are traces of sensation, and another form of body.
untitled, 2019
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gesso & oriental ink with water on traditional paper.
A soft accumulation of presence—
each mark a fingertip listening.
Silence begins not from absence, but from attention.
Reformist's Politics, 2004
Headline lettering on the wall from the 26th São Paulo Biennale.
This work is not made of silence,
but of voices that were never truly heard.
Between the wall and the letters, a tension remains—
not absence, but a refusal.
This is the silence of resistance, structured and restrained.
untitled, 2019
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acrylic with water on paper, 51.6 x 33.8 inches
This drawing was composed entirely through dripping—
across sixteen layers.
The rhythm of fall and flow marks the memory of the body's trace.
untitled, 2025
charcoal with medium on paper
Between strokes and intervals,
a breath is held and released.
This is a rhythm of erasure, not loss—
a silence written over itself.
This is where the echo of silence ends.
You may now see and hear—
a different time, a different body, and a different conversation.