The Calligraphic Works of South Korean Artist Ji Won Park Yangjun. The Most Profound Form of Address. The Conundrum (Lucrările caligrafice ale artistului sud coreean Ji Won Park Yangjun. Forma cea mai profundă a adresării. Taina)

The night before the opening, a hanging scroll unrolled revealing Communication. There were no words to comprehend, no word-explanations. There was only the Word captured in outstanding graphic form. It was complete Communion. Ji Won Park Yangjun, in Korea at the time, was sharing with me, in Romania, an undeniably beautiful short literary text composed in Korean artistic script. I was not able to comprehend any of it, and yet I could partake in the essence of the message that had reached me. This was the Message in its purest form. I was facing the „message” component; I was looking at Communication itself, untainted by comprehensibility.

When the world was at its beginning, „Let there be light!” inaugurated perception. But in that Godly moment of beginning without beginning, in that concentrated moment that was both an instant and an era, perception was in its ideal form- devoid of objects to cast its light upon: „And the earth was without form, and void”. That moment had been holy. Compared to our linear time it was „before” the robbing of the Tree of Knowledge. (And so much knowledge has indeed been robbed from then onward!)

Now, a hanging scroll of Communication was unrolled alone on a wall „without form, and void”. The unrolling of the scroll resembled a re-Creation of the World, Socialization, and Communication.

The exhibition was assembled the following day. That particular scroll ended up on a different wall. It was one of twenty scrolls set in different lighting. I wasn’t able to recognize it and did not care to try (it would have been easy, but I treasured the mystery over any type of certitude). The writings of Ji Won Park Yangjun (mostly haikus) were surrounding me from all sides. Any angle you viewed them from, they seemed to impart their own light, the light of other mornings. Whether translated or not, the texts sprung from the spell of dew drops unavailable to sunset in that form. And yet we could perceive humbly and recognize appreciatively how much thought, art, education, science, patience, passion, work, and life (the entire, finite life) one man has gifted to men, for them to repeatedly, infinitely collect their share of joy. We, Europeans, partake in the joy, namely the mystery of Ji Won’s art, in our own ways. This way, here, in the center of this room, our seemingly different religions humbly encounter one another. The Mysteries of the Far East and our seven Holy Sacraments- two cultures, two philosophies united by the same deep understanding, of which we simply value different aspects.

A scroll of paper, then twenty scrolls of paper bearing mysterious inscriptions, yet able to impart absolute Communication- the Ji Won conundrum, the strength of Peace among humankind and its wonderful races and peoples. The Earth is good, and culture: Eucharistic.

„And the evening and the morning” were the eighth day.

Under the patronage of the Embassy of the Republic of Korea and thanks to the benevolence of Ms. Yong-suk Park, the calligraphy exhibition of Ji Won Park Yangjun was hosted by the Korean Cultural Center of Cluj-Napoca, in collaboration with the „Cetatea Culturala” magazine, at the „Petre Dulfu” public library in Baia-Mare. The gallery was open between the 8^th and the 22^nd of November of 2007 in the Hall of the Arts of the library.

By Angela-Monica Jucan; Translation by Ioana-Cosanzeana Jucan