There's a peculiar pleasure in watching the street. Every day, I brush past countless people, yet no one's heart comes through clearly. We pass one another like scenery, overlook each other like objects. Beneath those seemingly calm faces, lie traces of emotion no one can quite discern〞 and that makes me all the more curious. Perhaps we are nothing more than fragments of the street〞extras without names〞drifting, pulsing, reacting in scattered flashes, never fully able to reveal what's inside.

 

I try to grasp those fragments and imagine. Fleeting glances, unfamiliar faces, the afterimage of old memories, and unspoken truths buried in daily life begin to flow out as stories and shapes.

Humor and romance, absurdity and confusion all mix together〞

forming exaggerated colors, distorted forms, and rough brushstrokes on the surface. The figures are no longer mere background〞they stir and twitch, alive, part of a stage.

 

The 29-piece series began as personal drawings I made on weekends since February 2025. At home, beside my child, between cracks in daily life〞these paintings accumulated. Sometimes, a real scene was the motif; other times, it was the emotion that moved my hand. Rather than painting in the formal sense, they feel like emotional records. They are less like paintings hung on a wall, and more like drawings that are simply placed〞 scattered scenes like my own mind, as disordered as a city, as uneven as a thought. They resemble the rhythm of the street : scenes that can scatter, disappear, and come together again〞without worry.

 

Here, there is strange, restless energy, and at the same time, a twitching vitality. Conflicting currents collide. I, too, am a bundle of contradictions: I find comfort in solitude, yet it overwhelms me. I live as part of the world, yet I want the world to become part of me. It is from this tension, from this anxious gap, that painting begins. As I create, twist, and move my figures, I try to let them move freely, instinctively, fiercely. Rather than suppressing anxiety, I attempt to transform it into a force that breaks through〞a gesture of resistance. The street, dense with energy just before it bursts, holds both anxiety and elation in extreme proximity.

 

The paintings of children are different. On the street, everyone is the protagonist〞and so, no one really is. The canvas fills with countless faces, but no single voice is ever clearly heard. In contrast, the child is unmistakably the main character. Their emotions are vivid, their gestures truthful. These are my own children, and their honest play and movement fill the frame.

Before painting the street, I begin with them〞as a kind of warm-up.

I draw from their raw energy and bring it into the street. By placing the hardened, gray faces of adults against the vibrant faces of children, I try to create tension.

 

And somewhere in between these two extremes〞

today, again, I begin to paint.