"circle point" is a painting that originated from my ongoing project Circulation, which began in 2019.
At the center of each canvas lies a solid circular form, physically pierced by hand using an awl and then layered with oil paint. These circles serve not only as visual focal points, but as symbolic portals—evoking the tension between presence and absence, body and beyond.
Circulation explores the paradoxical human condition: we live in full awareness of life, yet remain deeply conscious of death. When someone around us dies, we often adopt a double-edged attitude—recognizing death as the extinction of the body, yet intuitively connecting it to something beyond.
Since the earliest civilizations, death has been ritualized and symbolized through myth, religion, and abstract imagination—suggesting it is not simply the end of life, but a realm of higher dimensional meaning. In this work, I investigate life and death not as opposites, but as interlinked forces along a continuous metaphysical line.
From an aesthetic and philosophical perspective—particularly within Eastern traditions—death is not separation, but transformation.
This understanding of life and death as one cyclical force becomes the core of Center of the Circle, where each hand-pierced mark becomes a gesture of both creation and extinction.
