II. Within and Beyond the Frame
I came to further realize that “presence” or “absence” itself constitutes a potential creative framework. The “frame” functions as an invisible mechanism of viewing—it is not only the physical boundary of the drawing but also a cultural and ideological structure that determines “what is to be seen.” The frame establishes the order of looking: it limits the scope of the image while subtly shaping how viewers understand reality and memory. As Foucault points out, vision is not a neutral act of perception but a mode of knowledge production governed by power relations. From this perspective, the boundaries of a drawing are not purely a formal concern; they also reflect the power of deciding “who can be seen and who is excluded.”
In my early practice( like The Faintest Sign), my drawings were overly dependent on this “in-frame order.” I was accustomed to constructing images within self-determined boundaries, making space, memory, and emotion subordinate to the physical completeness of the canvas. While such compositions appeared “stable,” they invisibly compressed the parts of memory that could not be visualized.
In the period leading up to the Summer Show, this attachment to “order” became especially apparent. The works continued my earlier desire for control over form and structure—I tended to organize the composition through borders and order, hoping that each element would cohere rationally. Yet I gradually realized that this pursuit of visual purity and completeness was also limiting me. It functioned as a long-internalized “safety system,” allowing expression only within a controllable range and preventing me from truly confronting inner chaos and uncertainty. Repeated elements on the canvas reflected my compliance with the frame. The works appeared balanced but were over-rationalized. During tutorials with my tutor Sarah, she repeatedly emphasized the need to break this control and balance; over-detailed depictions of memory, with elements continually layered into the image, restrict the viewer’s perception and imagination.
After completing this stage, I began actively loosening this “frame.” Loosening does not mean outright rejection, but a conscious “yielding”—I no longer let composition dominate, but allowed the flow of memory to form the backbone of the work. This yielding led me to reconsider the politics of boundaries: only when I stopped controlling everything could my drawing become a “generative space” rather than a fixed object.
The Faintest Sign, 2025
In my practice, I began to juxtapose “control” and “loss of control”: while establishing borders, I allowed marks to overflow, stopped layering elements, and let pastel dust spread freely across the surface, even deliberately preserving traces altered by time and chance. For me, these uncertain and unpredictable parts reveal “truth”—they arise naturally from the interaction of body and mind, rather than from rational compositional planning.
As a result, What If It no longer aimed for stability, but began from “imbalance.” I treated the surface as a space continuously eroded by time and memory, allowing it to remain in flux. This shift gradually freed my practice from dependence on order, moving toward a more open approach—not focused on “how to present” but on experiencing “how the drawing generates itself.”
This awareness led me to reflect that what I needed to move beyond was not the form of drawing itself, but “my way of controlling drawing.” I began to let lines lose their boundaries, allowing the diffusion and fading of pastel dust to become the primary language of the work. By permitting blurred and incomplete elements to enter, I was not so much breaking the frame as reaching a form of reconciliation with it.
As “erasure” and “leaving space” gradually became part of my practice, I began to sense the loosening of these boundaries. At this point, I realized that “outside the frame” is not emptiness, but a concealed potential space.
When considering the arrangement of the exhibition space, I tried to make the boundaries of the work no longer defined by the edges of the canvas, but by an open frame—what I refer to as “beyond the frame.” The drawing began to extend onto the walls and floor, and the viewer’s body was drawn into the work. Rosalind Krauss, in Sculpture in the Expanded Field, notes that contemporary art is no longer confined by medium but crosses traditional classifications to enter a “redefined field.” This theory helped me reconsider my own practice: the drawing is no longer a closed surface, but a continuously overflowing presence, a form that breathes with space, body, and time. The meaning of the work is thus extended, no longer fixed “within the artwork,” but moving within the “process of viewing.”
At the same time, before making this work, I visited an exhibition by Do Ho Suh in London. He is an artist I greatly admire. He creates large-scale nylon structures that compress architecture, home, and memory into lightweight, transparent materials. Through these miniature houses, I could imagine the childhood homes I cherish. However, for me, achieving such maturity in my work is not yet possible.
Exhibition by Do Ho Suh in London
I ultimately created an exhibition space like this (described in more detail in the “Process” section). It was neither complete nor fully mature, yet perhaps “incompleteness” itself was a significant breakthrough for me. Even now, while writing this reflection, I can still feel the joy I experienced when the frame was finally arranged. I appreciated the spaces left blank and the elements of chance within it. In the past, I never allowed emptiness to appear in my work, but now I have taken a new step—these are all things that exist beyond the frame.
At the same time, because this new exhibition framework altered the act of viewing, I began to pay attention to changes in the viewer’s “looking behavior.” As Mirzoeff (2011) argues in The Right to Look, the “right to look” is not merely visual freedom, but also a form of resistance to visual power. In traditional painting, viewers are often mobilized by the frame as passive recipients, forced to read and interpret within a fixed visual range. When I broke the boundaries of the image, viewers were required to engage more actively with the work, searching for cues within blurriness and empty space, and reconstructing meaning within an uncertain structure. This open mode of viewing creates a fluid relationship between the work and its audience—meaning is no longer determined unilaterally by the artist, but continuously generated through the viewers’ thoughts and responses.
O’Doherty (1986), in Inside the White Cube, points out that the exhibition space itself acts as an “invisible frame,” shaping viewing through light, walls, and distance. When I allowed the drawing to extend beyond the canvas onto walls and floors, the viewer’s body was drawn into the act of seeing. At this point, “beyond the frame” was no longer emptiness, but a reactivated space. Rosalind Krauss’s (1979) concept of the “expanded field” further helped me reconsider the boundaries of drawing—when art crosses the definitions of medium and structure, it enters a new, continuously generative field.
For me, “going beyond the frame” is not merely a formal breakthrough but a critique of the mechanisms of viewing and visual power. The frame symbolizes order, centrality, and certainty, while my practice seeks to create ruptures at its edges, allowing overlooked, unstable, and blurred elements to emerge. I aim for the work to exist not as a completed whole, but in a state of open incompleteness. This openness not only reflects the fluidity and uncertainty of memory itself, but also becomes a core methodology in my drawing practice: by continuously questioning boundaries, the work expands into a space of ongoing, generative reflection.
Next: III. The Circulation of Incompleteness and Power
References
Suh, D.H. (2025) The Genesis Exhibition: Do Ho Suh: Walk the House. London: Tate Modern (1 May – 19 Oct. 2025).
Krauss, R. (1979) Sculpture in the Expanded Field. October, 8, pp. 30–44.
Mirzoeff, N. (2011) The Right to Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality. Durham: Duke University Press.
O’Doherty, B. (1986) Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space. Santa Monica, CA: Lapis Press.