고  차  분  Goh, Cha Boon

Artist’s Statement - Chaboon Goh

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The Vessel of the Soul: The Tent House

When our life began, we come out to the world wearing a house called flesh. The house is not of my choice—it is simply my primal base, inherited from my parents. This base governs my life and my very existence until I reach full adulthood. I call this vessel, which holds my spirit and soul—in other words, my shell (body)—a tent house. This realization comes from the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, Chapter 5: “For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.”

How the Outer House Reflects One’s Inner Side 

It is more appropriate to say that my work involves building a house rather than drawing one on a canvas. There are several steps involved in laying the foundation of a house on a blank canvas, with the intermediate stage being particularly unique and interesting. For example, the rough shapes of a house are quite sharp and oddly solid. Then, I cut these strange lumps out with a pair of scissors and chop them up with a knife. These chunks are so sharp that they easily cut my hands if I don’t wear gloves; sometimes, the blade cuts right through the canvas fabric, seemingly at will. When this happens I recall the pain from the inner thorns of my childhood that were left untrimmed. When I sit in front of my canvas alone with these thorns, I silently carve the house with a sculptural knife. I try to cut and slice away the painful day connected to my difficult personality. As the byproducts of this detachment from the canvas accumulate, my work takes on the shape of a round house. 

A House to Rest

Where is the house that allows me to truly rest? I dream of a house that goes beyond my existence and is a genuine place all people can rest in—a place where there is neither harm nor injury. I search for a perfect house that will embrace me, similar to a bluebird symbolized as happiness in The Blue Bird by Maurice Maeterlinck. After moving from house to house, I finally decide to stay in my current house to search for this bluebird of happiness. Sometimes, my expectation of being fully embraced as who I am comes back to me as a kind of hunger and loneliness that breaks and tears down the house inside my heart—this is why I long for a house that allows me to truly rest. The houses in my paintings are symbolic beings who represent my heart; whether alone or in a group, they swim freely on the canvas. The flock of houses fills the canvas as they make their way across roads, over mountains, and through oceans. On the day the tent of the flesh falls, the path to rest becomes difficult, so I will pace myself as I walk on this journey of life. Most will seek non-materialistic resting place only when their bodies have worn out, but since we cannot know exactly when this will happen, I will build today’s house rightly until I finally arrive at my resting place, free from the burden of having incomplete knowledge.