<Sea, Loneliness.>

KWAN OH JUN_<Sea, Loneliness.>_145.5x145.5cm_Oil on canvas_2023.

The artist's wife is a great painter. She went through a serious mental crisis during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

After her inpatient treatment at the hospital, we headed to the East Sea.

My wife and I were enjoying the beach in our own way.

As I reached back to where she was sitting, I saw her in the distance looking very lonely.

Modern people all live in solitude and alienation.

In particular, social distancing resulting from recent COVID-19 pandemic was an opportunity for me to confront our existential solitude.

As Kierkegaard said, ‘all human beings are banished from eternity to finitude and wander in solitude.’

I tried to capture ‘the loneliness of modern people’ through the back of my wife, who has just been discharged from the hospital and sits alone by the sea.

I tried to express a solitary artist's struggles with her mental crisis by contrasting the brilliantly beautiful sea.