Son Tae-sun exhibition captures the fleeting beauty of ballet in paint

Artist Son Tae-sun's invited exhibition "Where Movement Rests," featuring paintings that capture the motion of ballet, is on view at Bakdonghun House in Pyeongchang-dong, Seoul, through Nov. 21.

Son says the exhibition grew out of "an interest in things that disappear." Dance exists for only a moment — forms scatter, and the instant when beauty shines brightest never returns.

Yet Son argues that a vanished movement does not simply cease to exist. A gesture that fades before the eye leaves a trace in memory and sensation, and that trace, Son believes, can be reborn as another form of artistic language.

Son has long followed a practice of completing one painting for every book read. The sentences and ideas encountered in a book, along with the emotions and inspiration they stir, come together in a single canvas. Each work therefore holds within it one book and the accumulated hours of thought spent reading it.

The exhibition poses a question to visitors: Has what has disappeared truly disappeared? Through traces of color and form left on the canvas, Son explores the relationships between the momentary and the eternal, movement and stillness, presence and absence.

The exhibition runs through Nov. 21. Viewing hours are 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.

A graduate of the painting department — majoring in Korean traditional painting — at Kyonggi University, Son works across ballet-themed painting, crafts, wooden furniture and sculpture, and also serves as a curator and arts organizer.