Breathing within Gravity: A Practice-Based Study of Painting as Material Becoming (1997–2025)
From Material Experiments to a Methodological Shift toward Letting Gravity Complete the Work
Introduction
Rethinking the Conditions of Painting through Gravity and Breathing
In contemporary painting discourse, materials are often regarded as sources of visual effect and formal innovation, while bodily experience is frequently addressed through symbolic, narrative, or conceptual frameworks. Such approaches, however, tend to overlook a more fundamental issue: painting does not first take place at the level of image, but within the physical conditions shared by material and body. Among these conditions, gravity and breathing constitute the most basic, yet least directly examined, generative premises.
Gravity is not a formal element that can be selectively employed, but an inescapable condition of existence. Whether through the flow of liquids, the sedimentation of solids, the falling of dust, or the detachment and cracking that occur during drying and aging, gravity continuously acts upon matter as an irreversible force. It does not create images, but determines the ways in which images are able to exist. In this sense, painting is not a representation of the world, but a collection of traces left behind by gravitational action.
Corresponding to gravity, breathing is likewise not an abstract metaphor of life. It is a continuously occurring physiological process—the rhythmic generation and release of internal bodily pressure. Breathing cannot be suspended or accelerated into escape; it repeats incessantly in time and, under certain conditions, enters into direct conflict with smoke, odor, dust, and chemical reactions. When creative processes involve combustion, grinding, chemical reactions, or high-density material handling, breathing ceases to be a background activity that the artist can ignore and becomes instead a bodily experience forcibly exposed to risk.
The painting practice discussed in this paper is grounded in the sustained interaction between breathing and gravity. Since 1997, the artist has worked through different phases using materials including wax, oil paint, incense, ash, smoke, natural lacquer, epoxy resin, cement, metal, and industrial tools. These materials were not chosen for symbolic or stylistic reasons, but for how they respond differently to gravity and breathing under specific conditions. The forms that emerge through burning, flowing, sedimentation, drying, and detachment are not predesigned outcomes, but states in which matter is compelled to reveal itself under gravity and time.
Within this practice, painting is no longer understood as a planar visual composition, but as a record of material events. What appears on the surface is not a stable image, but the history of processes matter has undergone: ascent that fails and falls back, flow interrupted into stagnation, residues left by abrasion, and inevitable detachment during drying. These processes are not fully controllable; on the contrary, they often manifest through failure, discomfort, and bodily risk. It is precisely under these conditions of incomplete control that the work acquires its genuine mode of occurrence.
Accordingly, this paper proposes a mode of understanding distinct from formalist or symbolic analyses: painting is approached as a material process occurring within gravitational fields and conditions of breathing. Through an examination of different material phases, the paper explores how breathing operates as a continuous internal tension within the creative process, how gravity shapes the final state of materials as an irreversible condition, and in what sense the works may be understood as evidence of the interaction of these forces over time.
This is not merely a retrospective of an individual practice, but a methodological attempt to reposition body, material, and physical conditions within a single generative framework in contemporary painting—shifting painting away from image production toward the disclosure of conditions of existence themselves.
Chapter One
Breathing: A Continuous Internal Pressure
In discussions of artistic creation, breathing is often treated as a symbol of life or as a metaphor for spirituality and presence. In concrete material practice, however, breathing is not symbolic, but a continuously occurring physiological process that cannot be interrupted. It is not an object of observation, but an internal pressure that persistently acts upon the body throughout the act of making. In this sense, breathing constitutes one of the real conditions under which painting occurs, rather than its theme or content.
Breathing possesses distinct physical characteristics: cyclicality, inevitability, and the impossibility of escape. The body cannot choose whether to breathe; it can only inhale and exhale within a given rhythm. When the creative process involves the burning of incense, the accumulation of ash, the diffusion of smoke, or the grinding and cutting of industrial materials, air itself ceases to be a neutral medium. Smoke, odor, dust, and chemical gases enter directly into the respiratory system, transforming breathing from a background activity into a disrupted, obstructed, and risk-laden physiological fact.
During the phase in which incense, ash, and smoke function as primary materials, the density of air in the working environment changes dramatically. Thousands of incense sticks burn simultaneously, releasing concentrated smoke and odor, synchronizing visual formation with internal respiratory experience. Smoke does not merely appear as a visible form in the work, but exists as a real spatial condition during production, requiring constant bodily adjustment to cope with irritation and respiratory discomfort. Breathing is forced into conscious awareness, becoming inseparable from the act of making.
This experience of breathing does not arise after the work is completed, but unfolds throughout the entire process of material generation. While smoke continuously rises during combustion, ash persistently falls under gravity. Breathing becomes suspended between ascent and descent: inhaling rising smoke while bearing the accumulating burden of sedimented dust. Breathing thus emerges as an ongoing process of conflict with the environment, rather than a smooth and autonomous internal rhythm.
As materials shift toward natural lacquer, resin, cement, and industrial tools, the pressure placed upon breathing intensifies. The allergenic properties of wet lacquer expose the body directly to material risk, while drilling, grinding, and high-speed rotation generate dust, heat, and chemically reactive gases, transforming the studio into a fluctuating respiratory environment. In this phase, breathing becomes not merely a site of discomfort, but a determining factor in whether work can continue.
Importantly, this attention to breathing does not stem from a performative display of bodily limits, nor does it seek to aestheticize pain as emotional expression. Breathing here remains non-performative: neither deliberately exposed nor concealable. It is forced into presence by the actual interaction of materials and tools. As such, breathing is not aestheticized, but intervenes in its raw, physiological, and often uncomfortable form.
In this sense, breathing may be understood as a continuously generated internal tension. With each cycle of inhalation and exhalation, it confronts the instability of external conditions, while never escaping the constraints of gravity and materiality. Breathing does not generate form, but subtly and persistently influences rhythm, distance, and pause between the artist and the material. Through these minute yet repeated adjustments, the final state of the work gradually emerges.
Thus, within this practice, breathing is neither thematic nor symbolic. As an uninterruptible physiological reality, it works together with burning, flowing, sedimentation, and drying to constitute the conditions under which painting occurs. Recognizing this helps to reconsider the relationship between painting and the body: painting is no longer merely the coordination of hand and eye, but an event unfolding between respiratory pressure and material process.
Chapter Two
Gravity: A Condition Matter Cannot Escape
If breathing constitutes the internal pressure under which painting takes place, gravity is the external condition from which all material processes are unable to escape. Gravity does not need to be made visible; it is always already present. Through its continuous operation, liquids sink, ash falls, dust gradually settles in the air, and materials undergoing drying detach and collapse. Gravity neither creates form nor conveys meaning, yet it silently determines the ways in which matter can exist.
In traditional painting, gravity has often been treated as a physical condition that can be disciplined or neutralized through technique. Paint is thickened, surfaces are fixed vertically or horizontally, flows are restrained, and falling is concealed. In the practice discussed here, however, gravity is neither neutralized nor concealed. Instead, it is deliberately introduced as a dominant condition of generation. Flow, sedimentation, and failure are not corrected but allowed to fully occur. Painting thus ceases to be an act of control over matter and becomes a process of working alongside gravity under irreversible conditions.
In early works using wax and oil paint, gravity first becomes perceptible through bodily form. When heated, wax begins to flow; as it cools, it gradually solidifies. Its final shape is not determined solely by the hand but is slowly modified by gravity over time. Human and animal figures do not function as narrative subjects, but as carriers of weight. Their sinking, accumulation, and deformation render gravity an implicit force within the image. The image is not a symbol of gravity, but the result of gravity’s action.
When materials shift to incense, ash, and smoke, gravity no longer adheres to solid form but moves into the air. Smoke ascends during combustion, yet this ascent is inseparable from failure: smoke cannot remain and ultimately dissipates into space; ash, by contrast, inevitably falls and accumulates on the surface. Gravity here operates through a double movement—it permits a temporary rising while continuously pulling everything back downward. Painting no longer represents the weight of objects, but traces the gravitational pathways within air itself.
This tension between ascent and descent introduces a temporal dimension into painting. The burning of incense is not instantaneous, but unfolds through sustained duration; the sedimentation of ash cannot be accelerated or reversed. The work does not appear at once but gradually takes shape over time. Gravity thus manifests not as a dramatic force, but as a slow, continuous accumulation that alters material states.
As materials move toward natural lacquer, gravity enters the internal logic of vegetal matter. Extracted as liquid sap, lacquer obeys gravity throughout refinement and drying—flowing, dripping, halting, and hardening. Its form is not shaped by gesture alone, but constantly revised by gravity between movement and stoppage. Lacquer works present neither decorative surface nor artisanal finish; rather, they register a state in which vegetal fluid is compelled to cease movement under gravity. Nature here is not romanticized, but shown to possess resistance and risk.
With the introduction of industrial materials, gravity is further amplified by technological conditions. High-speed tools, repeated grinding, and forceful impact do not counteract gravity; they intensify it. Dust is propelled into the air only to fall again and adhere to surfaces not yet fully cured; gases generated by chemical reactions disperse rapidly, leaving heavy residues behind. Gravity becomes not a background condition, but an accelerated and multiplied cycle.
It is important to note that gravity in these works does not operate as a uniform or stable force. It is entangled with material properties, temporal extension, and modes of production, producing different rhythms and densities. Some materials settle and fix quickly, while others continue to transform through repeated drying and abrasion. Painting thus becomes a field of overlapping gravitational trajectories rather than a unified compositional system.
In recent works, this understanding of gravity undergoes a decisive shift. The artist gradually abandons the presetting of formal outcomes and ceases to resist gravity through control. Materials are allowed to complete their own processes of detachment, cracking, and termination through drying and aging. Gravity is no longer delayed or opposed, but permitted to finish its course. As a result, works lose centrality and stability while gaining a more truthful mode of becoming.
In this sense, gravity is not a negative force of oppression, but a revealing condition. It compels matter to expose its limits and shifts painting away from formal construction toward the disclosure of conditions of existence. Understanding gravity as an inescapable condition helps reposition painting itself—not as visual expression, but as an event occurring within material, temporal, and bodily forces that cannot be avoided.
Chapter Three
Material Phases as Gravitational Experiments
If painting is understood as a material event occurring within the conditions of gravity and breathing, then changes in material no longer signify stylistic or medium-based shifts, but represent different ways of entering gravitational conditions. Across this long-term practice, each material choice establishes a distinct experimental setup: how matter flows, burns, settles, or dries; how the body adjusts itself amid odor, dust, and risk; and how gravity shapes final states at different levels. These phases do not constitute linear development, but a series of juxtaposed gravitational experiments.
1. Wax and Oil Paint: Gravity Manifested through the Body
In the earliest phase, wax and oil paint mark the initial entry into the question of gravity. As a material capable of transitioning between solid and liquid states, wax makes gravity visible through flow and cooling. Paint no longer fully obeys the hand, but deforms, sinks, and solidifies under temperature change. Human and animal figures function not as narrative subjects, but as carriers of weight—pressed, pulled, and gradually fixed by gravity.
This phase is relatively restrained, yet it establishes the logic underlying the entire practice. Gravity has not yet entered air or chemical processes, but it already manifests through bodily deformation and stasis. Painting here is not representation, but a record of how bodies are compelled into form under gravity.
2. Incense, Ash, and Smoke: Atmospheric Gravity and Respiratory Conflict
As materials shift to incense, ash, and smoke, the gravitational experiment undergoes a decisive displacement—from solid form into air and breathing. Thousands of incense sticks burn simultaneously, expanding the conditions of generation from a surface into a smoke-filled field. Smoke’s ascent is not an escape from gravity, but a temporary deviation that inevitably dissipates; ash continuously falls and accumulates under gravity.
Form is no longer achieved through vision alone, but through respiratory experience and temporal extension. The distribution and thickness of ash cannot be designed; surfaces become outcomes of combustion. More critically, the artist’s respiratory system is directly implicated: air density, irritation, and breathing discomfort turn making into an ongoing negotiation between body and environment.
Here, breathing becomes explicitly established as a generative condition. Painting shifts from the weight of objects to the weight of air, from visible form to bodily experience that cannot be ignored.
3. Natural Lacquer: Vegetal Gravity and Natural Risk
The lacquer phase advances gravitational experimentation into the internal logic of natural material. Extracted as liquid sap, lacquer obeys gravity throughout application and drying. Its movement does not expand freely but gradually slows, hardens, and seals itself. Unlike earlier materials, lacquer relies not on violent physical processes but on slow, irreversible drying.
What matters here is not material tradition, but bodily consequence. Wet lacquer’s allergenic properties render natural material itself a condition of risk. The body is no longer merely an operator, but is forced into exposure during material generation. Nature is no longer opposed to industry, but participates equally as gravity-bound matter.
Here, gravity reveals itself not through combustion or impact, but through enforced stoppage of flow. Painting records not vitality, but fixation.
4. Industrial Materials: Gravity Amplified by Technology
With epoxy resin, cement, metal, and high-speed tools, gravitational experimentation reaches its most intense stage. Drilling, grinding, rotation, and repeated impact do not diminish gravity, but multiply sedimentation and collapse. Dust is launched upward and then pulled back down into still-curing surfaces; chemical vapors dissipate, leaving dense residue.
Production becomes cyclical: destruction, suspension, sedimentation, solidification—and destruction again. Surfaces cease to be stable carriers and become sites of recurring gravitational events. Breathing is subject to high-density dust and gas, making bodily presence unavoidable. Painting ceases to be planar and becomes a series of material-bodily events.
5. Recent Shift: Letting Gravity Complete the Work
In recent years, these gravitational experiments undergo a methodological shift. Rather than intensifying conflict, the artist reduces intervention and allows materials to complete their own processes through drying, aging, and weight. Gravity is no longer provoked or extended, but accepted as the force that completes the work.
Compositional centrality dissolves into multiple coexisting gravitational paths. Emphasis shifts from the intensity of generation to residues left after completion. This shift reflects maturity: gravity is no longer dominated, but acknowledged as irreplaceable.
Across these phases, painting emerges not as media evolution, but as a series of investigations into how gravity is triggered, amplified, and completed under different conditions. Material diversity does not fragment the work, but confirms a single reality: where breathing cannot pause and gravity cannot be escaped, matter must reveal itself.
Chapter Four
From Generating Conflict to Letting Gravity Complete
In earlier phases, painting often emerged through intense intervention—burning, grinding, impact, accumulation, and repeated destruction—amplifying gravity within concentrated physical processes. Matter was forced to expose its limits, while breathing endured persistent pressure. In recent practice, however, a decisive shift occurs: the artist no longer compels gravity to appear through conflict, but relinquishes control, allowing gravity to complete the work autonomously.
This shift does not weaken material intensity or bodily experience; rather, it reflects a deeper understanding of gravity. Previously, gravity was repeatedly activated through intervention—materials broken, lifted, and resettled. In recent works, intervention diminishes; drying, aging, and weight are permitted to unfold on their own. Gravity ceases to be an event and becomes a condition of conclusion.
Painting thus withdraws from theatrical generation. Works no longer form around centralized tension, but display multiple dispersed gravitational trajectories: dense areas slowly sink, surfaces peel due to drying contraction, internal structures emerge through time. These results are not designed, but gradually appear as gravity continues to operate.
Failure is no longer corrected. Detachment and incompletion become necessary conditions of the work’s existence. The artist’s role shifts—from operator to observer, from forcing conditions to allowing them. Painting does not seek formal completion, but acknowledges natural cessation.
This surrender of control redefines bodily presence. In earlier industrial phases, fatigue and respiratory stress placed the body at the center; in recent works, the body recedes without disappearing. It participates through waiting, pacing, and enduring duration. Breathing stabilizes; the body becomes a vessel for time.
Letting gravity complete the work thus carries philosophical significance. It does not abdicate authorship, but acknowledges gravity as the final authority. Works are no longer “finished,” but “have occurred.”
Conclusion
Painting as Traces of Breathing within Gravity
Through the analysis of a painting practice spanning nearly three decades, this paper rethinks painting through gravity and breathing—conditions that are omnipresent yet often overlooked. Rather than image production, painting is revealed as an event in which matter generates and halts under irreversible forces.
Breathing is not symbolic, but an internal pressure that cannot withdraw from material and environment. Under combustion, abrasion, and chemical reaction, breathing becomes bodily fact. Gravity, correspondingly, is not background but an irrevocable condition shaping matter’s final state.
Material phases do not signify stylistic change, but distinct entrances into gravity–breath conditions. Recent shifts toward letting gravity complete the work clarify the practice’s position: there is no ideal endpoint, only the moment when generation ceases.
Within contemporary painting discourse, this approach offers an alternative to formalism and symbolic narration. Materials are not assigned meaning; they are allowed to appear under real conditions. Painting becomes a collection of material traces—evidence of how matter existed under gravity while breathing continued.
Painting, thus redefined, is inseparable from time, body, and physical reality. It does not stand apart from the world, but unfolds within forces the world continuously applies. When breathing cannot pause and gravity cannot be escaped, painting reveals not intention, but existence itself.