Baek’s sculptural works of accentuated texture and curviness gain their energy through the artist’s own inspiration from and interpretation of fundamental elements like light and wind. ‘Light is the roof of all life’ while wind symbolized small movements in life that create the existence of a person.
The artist’s marble works exemplifies how sculpture is more than just a form – he daringly plays and explores the essentially classic and pure material in varying textures, volumes, shapes, and sizes. They challenge the existing framework of sculptures being structure d vertical and upstanding in their own ways. His practices attempt to seek and experiment with spaces moulded, carved and engraved in different ways, like one of his earlier works of a cube being drilled in all directions, from inside and out.
Be it textured circles of repetitive layers, or marble-on-marble in wave-life fashion, Baek’s works are about continuous movement and tenacity. They epitomize an ephemeral softness at every moment that can not only be felt but also seen. They portray the meaning of life, the wiliness of a human in every moment, predictable or not, to discover the paths that fate has brought in front of us; the fundamental aspect of human existence. Light is the roof of all life. The appearance of light is a fundamental event of creation that is interpreted and religiously, philosophically, culturally and physically.
Baek’s ‘Fiat Lux Series’ highlights light as the artist’s main inspiration and subject. ‘Fiat Lux’ means ‘let there be light’ in Latin, which stems from Genesis 1:3 – ‘And God said, Let there be light: and there was light’.
It is through abstract shapes generate and diffuse light, that the artist wishes the fundamental meaning of creation and formation, and the light of hope to spread endlessly. Each of the artist’s expression begins by inserting a point on the marble surface, then obtaining texture and mobility through the superposition of innumerable dots. This particular series reveals Baek’s will to live, his interpretation of the state of chaos before creation, and his articulation of the constant struggle between an artist and the material.
In the ‘Rushing Wind series’, the artist explores how small movements in life create and define existence, just as how a smal l breeze blowing into the Pacific Ocean could cause a tornado that goes through the Americas. The overlapping and repeatedly layered sculptures brings into existence their very own unique form of art full of texture and curvature, realizing its strengths of life.
