This series examines what remains after an image is withdrawn. Across Eastern and Western traditions, the flower carries layers of poetic meaning, yet in today’s culture it has become a token of repetition and shallow ornament. “Non-Flower Refrain” removes the concrete form and physiology of the flower, leaving only rhythm and echo. Absence itself becomes the site of tension: color and ink rebuild order where no flower appears, and repetition shifts from decoration to a disturbance of vision. Each work is a rehearsal of what survives once the familiar motif is stripped away—a place where tension is reborn.
This series begins with a rethinking of Zen. In today’s Eastern context, Zen has become sloganized and decorative, a cliché spoken by all; in the West, its limited reception often remains on the surface. Thus it has lost its tie to thought, and its power to reach the mind. Transcendent Zen seeks to free Zen from the rigid images of stillness, detachment, and emptiness, and to place it in a state of energy and eruption. Circles clash with light, ink collides with color, producing fields of tension that defy expectation. In this “transcendent” state, Zen regains its generative force. Only such transcendence may approach the truth of Zen.
This series engages the extreme states of cosmic becoming. Cosmogenesis speaks of the ceaseless transformation of all things, while Vision at the Edge pushes seeing to its limits. In these works, blocks of color, fractures, and eruptions of energy collide, forming scenes that are both vast and on the verge of rupture. Here color-ink does not depict but simulates the tension of cosmic evolution—the folding, tearing, and renewal of matter. What the viewer encounters is not representation but a threshold experience: at the edge of vision, the universe appears as an ever-unfolding force.
*Tension Experiments · Illusory Forms* (2024) revisits the ink system of Chinese painting, using ink and xuan paper as its central medium. The works embody a paradox of viewing: from a distance, they seem to depict landscapes, as if mountains and waters emerge; yet upon close inspection, the forms dissolve, leaving only washes of ink, textures, and the flow of tension. This oscillation between “presence and absence” becomes a meditation on the notion of representation. It not only exposes the mechanism of illusion within image perception, but also provokes questions about reality itself: how much of what we call the true “image” may also be illusion? And what is it that generates such illusions?
Contemporary Color-Ink represents Han Mo’s artistic practice over more than two decades, seeking to transform traditional Chinese painting into contemporary visual art. This group of works spans a wide time frame, reflecting different stages of his creative trajectory. Across these explorations, color-ink expands its possibilities—from figuration to abstraction, from aesthetic play to conceptual reflection—while remaining attentive to poetry and sensibility. Though not yet shaped by a clear contemporary framework, these works release the freedom that emerges once color-ink departs from traditional narratives. They emphasize traces of chance and fluid structures, laying the groundwork for later Tension Experiments.
