Jaemin Bae (b. 1992, Daegu) never set out to be an artist. He knew that he wanted to work in art, but also that an artist was by no means a promising career prospect. He had heard that professional art restorers were hired by the government to work in cultural sectors, such as state-run museums.
He could be a gongmuwon, a government worker, with the unglamorous but assuredly stable lifestyle that follows. This was the biggest reason he chose to study Buddhist art in college, though a lifetime of growing up in a Buddhist household certainly contributed too. 

It was while undergoing this intensely specialized curriculum that his outlook shifted. Rigorous training in the use of traditional materials was paired with a strict adherence to historic techniques. It was a field where emulating the masters of millennia past, down to the most delicate hairlines, was held in utmost sanctity. Any technical deviancy was met with disapproval, and worse, bewilderment. These years left Bae with an indelible sense of discipline and a trove of knowledge on an otherwise lost art form - along with mounting frustration. Finally, he came to realize that he was not, in fact, gongmuwon material.

This renouncement allowed Bae a creative freedom, one which he relished. Holed up in his cramped studio flat in hilly Haebang-chon ("Liberation Village"), he churned out works at a remarkable rate. Liberated from the confines of tradition, academia, any lingering career doubts and even his mandatory military service (which he finished during this period),  Bae was basking in that fleeting, rosy period in a young artist’s career: brimming with both confidence and zeal. 

This came to an abrupt halt when his flat burned to the ground while he was slept. Waking up to heavy black smoke enveloping his bedroom, he managed to jump over the flames to safety. In the process, his body, not to mention most of his possessions and works, was ravaged.  

Bae spent the next months in a hospital, heavily sedated while whole sections of his skin underwent reconsturctive surgery. For the first few weeks he could not open his eyes - his eyelids had melded shut in the intense heat. All he could discern was the vague silhouette of the sun rising and falling over the horizon, presumably through a window by his bedside. Moments of lucidity were interspersed by opioid-induced hallucinations. It was during these vivid waking dreams and pitch-dark days that the young artist faced his mortality. 

Near-death experiences leading to a reavowal of faith is a common tale. For Bae, it was more of an expansion, rather than a discovery or return. He remained a painter, and a Buddhist. But reverence and prayer now made way for contemplation and reflection. This shift was not a turn to the secular, but an expanded view of spirituality: rather than being confined to the statuesque figures of buddha and bodhisattva, Bae began to paint the non-deific: the natural world, the people around him. In each of these subjects he found an inner world to capture onto canvas.

His ongoing series of works titled "Towoo" (clay figurine) embodies this broadened focus. The heavily geometricized, abstracted  figures are just discernable enough to make out their human-ness. They stand in stark contrast to Bae’s earlier depictions of Buddhist deities, expressed in crisp, precise lines and adhering to such precise decorum as how much the ends of their eyes should curve. For Bae, deities as defined by scripture were discernable and clear-cut. People proved mercurial and complex, much more difficult to portray.

Perhaps because he’d had enough of complexity, Bae relocated back to his childhood home of Daegu in 2024. Having called Seoul his adopted city for the last fourteen years, he decided that he’d had his fill for now. The last few years in particular had been particularly tumultuous - an equal measure of ups and downs, especially in terms of the people around him. A change of pace was in order, and Daegu was most definitely a change for the slower, calmer. 

Immediately upon his return, he was struck by how old his grandparents had gotten during his absence. While converting his grandfather’s old workshop into a studio space, Bae witnessed just how much frailer they had become. Having spent a portion of his childhood under their care, Bae couldn’t help but ponder their mortality, and that his time with them could soon come to an end. 

Faced with this unavoidable truth, Bae chose to focus not on separation and loss, but on the eventual reunion that would await them many years from now. "Opus" is the series of works that followed, depicting not the exterior figure but their emotion and spirit. Bae wanted to paint his grandparents, but this was an impossible task: their presence in his life was too all-encompassing and broad to depict through figuration. Much like the unfortunate men who couldn’t discern the shape of a hulking elephant by touch, he could not ascribe a shape or form to them. Instead, the resulting works resemble pure radiations of light, captured in single-tone hues. He has since continued this series, using it as a vehicle for expressing the very real but incorporeal nature of other people's inner universes. 

Buddhist doctrine, no matter the branch or creed, teaches that bodhi or enlightenment can be obtained by anyone, that anyone can become a buddha. Its many scriptures also tell us that this is a saintly, heroic endeavor, sought by few and achieved by even less. The overwhelmingly vast majority of people, whether believers or not, lack the dedication, will, and resolve to do so - we will remain much the same, in all our virtues and misdeeds, our moments of selfless compassion and willful negligence tangled into a karmic Gordian knot. 

Whether through steely resolve or naiveté, Bae seems intent on focusing on the hopeful former, than on the disheartening latter. He has expanded his scope of subject matter to the secular - while retaining a deep awareness of spirituality in all its forms: that each and every being is just as worthy as the next to stand at the starting lines of enlightenment. That we all carry the potential to become something more than our current selves. His abstracted human figures exude something previously lacking in his meticulously crafted god-figures: a sense of hope, and a belief that we can transcend our current states to be something more, something virtuous.