In the bamboo forest, a garden of bamboo scent

Aesthetics of uprightness and emptiness
The place of bamboo in the minds of East Asian people goes far beyond our imagination. Because Bamboo grows tall and straight by emptying its body and creating voids within, so it has been praised as a representative of uprightness and emptiness. Especially, Korea, Japan, and China all placed bamboo in the first rank of evergreens, even surpassing the pine tree, and gave bamboo the first place for its nobility of soul. Scholars believed that the scent of bamboo expresses a world of pure ideal, and thought they would enter a pure spiritual world when they went into a bamboo forest because of the scent of spirit represented by bamboo.

Bamboo grows high and fast. When grown, they form a forest that murmurs gently in the wind. They create a calm and quite atmosphere in wind, rain, snow, or dew. They proudly show off their green color during all four seasons, but not brilliantly. Bamboos always express the purity of a noble spirit in a painting. In Asian paintings, bamboo is one of the “Three Friends during the Cold Winter” along with the pine tree and the spring apricot flower. It is also included among the “Four Gracious Plants” along with the apricot flower, orchid, and chrysanthemum. A bamboo forest is regarded as the best cradle of spirit in Asian painting aesthetics.


A Harmony of black and gray

Choi Byung-kwan’s photos of bamboo are themselves a scent of spirit made from photos, like a garden of bamboo scent. Their dignity is sufficient to compare them with the “Four Gracious Plants” and matches the purity of bamboo expressed in Asian paintings.

Brightness and darkness fill his garden of bamboo scent. Light and shadow in his bamboo forest are always revealing and concealing. Revealing shows the form, while concealing becomes an icon. They endlessly fill and flow. Only a person who is in a bamboo forest knows that inside it is both dark but bright. The light in the bamboo forest pierces the bamboo, penetrates the gaps, in gleams and flashes. The light is straight and soft, appearing for a moment and disappearing.

Moreover, his bamboo scent is an expression of the spirit and the soul. Brightness is a form of the spirit, and darkness is a backdrop for the soul; together they become as one - body and soul. The black becomes a gray like the ink of a brush stroke, and the gray becomes black like the black backdrop. They each become the other’s light and shade and so become the forest. The physical form is strong yet soft; the icon is soft but strong. They become each other’s being and backdrop. Each tries to hide itself, but shed light on the other, revealing itself by hiding the other with its joints and texture, and so they become a forest. Therefore, they become soft and strong, black but gray, and gray but black, expressing the distinguished spirit and soul of bamboo.


Antagonism of Reality and Impression

His bamboos are thick and robust. The bamboos have a reality that we can see and touch. They are also the bamboo of pure Impression. In western art, we would call this minimalism. Reality is the physical world of joints and texture. But impression is also a property of the matter that lets us see the interior and exterior nature of the object. His bamboo shows the antagonism between the physical reality and the impression, so we are inevitably drawn in and immersed in the images.


A time of annihilation, a place of silence

Lastly, his bamboos are a place of annihilation and silence. Annihilation and silence have long been his aesthetics. In his photos, darkness is the deep silence of extinction, and brightness is his personal branch of quietness. He expresses naturalism of existence with long, slow breaths. He is every inch a naturalist photographer. Naturalism is the aesthetic that drives the interior rhythm of life and natural order. Moreover, it is a philosophy that, flowing gently, slowly, quietly, and clearly turns back the spiritual rhythm and natural order. Graceful nature in a deep bamboo forest, and deeply engraved spirit and soul.


Graceful, noble, and beautiful.


Head of Modern Photograph Research Center
Jin Dong-sun




50x50 cm (20x20 in) & 60x30 cm (24x12 in) - Gelatin silver print
Edition of 10
2 000€

100x100cm (40x40 in) - Archival inkjet print
Edition of 5
4 000 €

200 x100 cm (80x40 in) - Archival inkjet print
Edition of 5
7 900 €

All prices 21% taxes and framing included




Please contact the gallery for current pricing and availability > CLICK HERE