Bae Bien-U, 分合 - PART:MEET

From the very beginning of his career as a photographer, the forest in the mountains of Gyeongju has been the preferred subject for Bae Bien-U. In this forest, pine trees surround the royal tombs. As the energy of life is believed to pass through them, pines carry a long tradition in Korean culture. They mediate between heaven and earth and are important in many rituals of life and death. The ritual of coming and going, of man’s short “encounter” with—and in—life and nature, is expressed in the exhibition’s Chinese title 分合 (‘fēnhé’).

This phrase refers to a paradoxical meeting. It contains the signs for both separation (分 ‘fēn’) and incorporation (合 ‘hé’). Thus, an encounter always implies a parting. A presence holds an absence. The visible implies what is unseen. (Human) nature is never fixed, but always unstable and transforming between counterparts. Beautifully opposing forces are its drive. For Bae, the pine tree forest is a metaphor for human society in which different forces continuously interact.

At once vibrantly energetic and comfortingly still, the pine forest is a balanced paradox. It appears to be peaceful and in perfect vertical balance, yet its surface hides a chaotic constellation of swarming roots. The forest is a kind of in-between space, where one experiences a mysterious equilibrium that’s the result of a permanent process of balancing and counterbalancing between different states of being.

When Bae Bien-U presses the shutter, he captures this invisible process in a split second and condenses it into a photograph. The pine trees are caught in their true “here-and-now-ness”. They have neither a past nor a future, but are most of all present in a space that transcends the physicality of real life’s paradoxical forces.

The proportions of the photograph’s frame enforce Bae’s ideas. For the first time since the 1980s, he decided to use 6x6 negatives with a 1:1 ratio, instead of the panoramic 6x12 negatives. Its inherent deeper meaning inspires his choice for the 1:1 ratio. The ratio 1:1 symbolises a mystic experience, an opening in life to holiness. In many different cultures this ratio is symbol of (en)light(enment).

Bae’s photographs extend beyond their frames. They are openings. The viewer is invited to step into them, wander through the forest and encounter the equilibrium of nature in boundless transformation.