『The Back of Things』 was published by [Modern Literature].
This is a collection of essays by Ahn Kyu-chul, who transcends the genres of sculptor and artist, and simply and purely expresses objects and shapes, as well as his own attitude toward life and thoughts.
He has been serializing his work under the title ‘A Picture Drawn with My Story’ in the monthly magazine [Modern Literature] for 11 years since 2010.
The sequel to the first book, Nine Goldfish and the Distant Waters, published in 2013, “The Back View of Things” is a compilation of 67 articles and illustrations serialized since the January 2014 issue.

A sculptor is someone who frees the shapes trapped in stone.
I have no intention of disparaging his insight that penetrates the surface of things, nor the numerous masterpieces he left behind, but I sometimes wonder about the fragments and dust he broke with his hammer and chisel for his own work.
(……) Here, the world is divided into form and formless, what remains and what is discarded.
Creating art was about distinguishing between what would be remembered and what would be forgotten, and making clear the boundaries between them.
Now that Michelangelo and his successors have drawn out the forms hidden in all the marble of the world, we are ultimately searching for the forms hidden in the rubble, in the discarded fragments and dust.
--- p.11~12, from “Form and Formlessness”

If it disappears, live as if it doesn't exist.
We must learn to let go of things that keep running away.
Instead of making more boxes and drawers and confining them in them, we should try, if possible, to imitate the sober life of the monks.
Just as flowers bloom without being called when the time comes, things that have disappeared will reappear someday. Now is the time to clean up my messy desk and throw away the clutter that I may never use. It is time for me to run away from them first.
--- p.39~41, from “Things”

Long ago, when someone said, "It came alive," to me it sounded like "It disappeared."
It may have sounded that way because the person had actually disappeared from my memory for a while.
It must have meant that even though it was a difficult life, I was still able to survive.
(……) Saying that it’s okay, saying that there’s nothing you can do but that it’s fate, saying that it’s something you have to handle entirely yourself and that you won’t listen to any pathetic consolation.
A life that is not about 'living', 'coming to live', 'surviving', 'surviving', or 'surviving', but about 'living off', 'getting rid of', and 'living away', and thus ultimately disappearing from life.
--- p.83~84, from “Coming Alive”

Whether I'm writing or drawing, I can't leave my sketchbook and pencil behind.
I love the feel of Kent paper and the sound of it squeaking through the pencil tip.
I love the freedom that is allowed there, the freedom to move slowly like a snail, to stand still, and to always be able to go back to where I was before.
There is a freedom there that is unimaginable in writing like an official document, written with a ballpoint pen on stiff A4 paper.
--- p.177~179, from “Writing in a Sketchbook”

In a world where the saying, "If you don't change, you die" has become the zeitgeist, we are being driven out onto the streets, completely unprepared for the long lifespan of the "100-year era," as we bite each other and are whipped by the premonitions of impending unemployment, impending bankruptcy, impending disaster, and impending catastrophe.
(……) In these days when no one talks about eternity or immortality, we need a carpenter who will build a house for the soul that will last 100 years, not an interior design that will last three months.

--- p.200, from “The 100-Year-Old Era”