Kwan Oh Jun_<Winter mountain, Self-portrait,>_145.5 x 145.5cm_Oil on canvas_2022

Living in modern society as an artist is a lot of pain.

While working, the artist is alienated from the outside world.

In the fierce competition of the post-industrial society, I feel anxious as if I am being weeded out alone.

If this alienation and anxiety persist, the artist becomes depressed.

Camus argues that ‘absurdity alienates humans from the world they live in through boredom and unfamiliarity’.

Adorno defines reality as untruth.

Adorno believes that intellect can define irrational pain that exists in reality, but cannot express it through experience, so he pins his hopes on art.

During the peak of the corona pandemic I have experience facing the fact that humans are existential beings in the perpetual nature, and therefore are fundamentally alienated, depressed, and insecure.

I tried to express the experience of that period pictorially.