Bien-U BAE
*1950 in Yosu, South Corea
 

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The works of Bae Bien-U, a point of contact between the heavens and the earth
The unique eye of Bae Bien-U can be equally identified in his other works when he deciphers the point of contact between the visible world and the invisible world in nature as well as in the landscape. It is well known that Bae Bien-U has been greatly inspired by pines and pine groves. In the photographs of pines, setting the dominant line vertical in accordance with the image of standing trees, he seems to have expressed them as creatures which rejoin the heavens and the earth (and the nether world). He apparently perceived an invisible horizontal line, which connects the divided regions, inhered in the succession of vertical trees. We can even say that individual pines suggest human beings, while a pine grove reminds us of a thick, jostling crowd.
He has preferred to photograph the pines on the hills in the suburbs of the old town of Gyeongju. Although pine trees can be seen anywhere in Korea and a pine grove is a landscape familiar to the Koreans, these photographs are more than visual records of a typical images of the nature in Korea. The architecture of Jongmyo (the ancestral shrine of the royal family), which he photographed before, is a work of formative art itself, while a pine grove or a landscape and nature in general, always exists chaos. When a photographer triggers a camera at nature, he will automatically record an aspect of the chaos. Whether the photograph is deserving of the name of art is another question. Taking an artistic photograph would need an eye to decipher an artistic form in the middle of the chaos. A photograph as a work of art would give some formation to the chaos, while a photograph in the usual meaning just clips an aspect of the chaos in a photographic frame. In the photographs of Bae Bien-U, the pine grove is not taken simply as a landscape, that is, a part of the nature. You would feel as if the trees or the grove, given a clear formation by the photographer, was coming out of the landscape and approaching you directly. Such an impression on his works tells you that they should be called artistic rather than photographic. / Shigeo CHIBA

The viewer is surrounded by photographs of pine trees found at an ancient grave site near Kyong-Ju (Kyung-Ju, Gyeongju) taken from the central vantage point at which the viewer stands.
Kyong-Ju is located in the southeastern part of Korea about 60 km north of Pusan. It was the old capital city of the Shilla dynasty during more than 1,000 years from BC 57 to AD 992. A lot of historic monuments, especially numerous Siberian styled tombs, are scattered throughout the city. The achievements of the Shilla people and their devotion to Buddha are evident in the stone images carved on cliff walls and the other stone monuments found throughout the area.
It was appointed by UNESCO in 1995 as one of the world historic cultural heritage places. Currently, the population of Kyong-Ju is around 150,000, but in ancient times after Shilla dynasty unified Korea in AD 668, the population was estimated about 800,000, which was one of the most thriving cities of the world. Around that time, the city was the door of Korea to the world.


      

SNM1A-001H, 125 x 250 cm / 49.2" x 98.4"

SNM2A-001H, 160 x 200 cm / 63" x 78.7"

SNM1A-003H, 125 x 250 cm / 49.2" x 98.4"

SNM2A-002V, 200 x 160 cm / 78.7" x 63"

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