"Questions by Ahn Kyu-chul" is a book containing the questions that artist Ahn Kyu-chul has asked over the past 40 years.
The questions he poses about art, the world, life, and above all, the times and reality are the foundation of his art and the reason he makes art.

Whenever I'm asked what a writer does, I always answer that a writer is someone who asks questions.
The artist's job is to constantly question the world, life, and the conventions and limitations of art, thereby exploring other possibilities for the world, life, and art.
So, what were the questions I've been asking over the past 40 years as an artist? To whom were they directed, how were they posed, and what answers did I receive? Were they the questions most desperately needed at the time?
--- From the back cover

Why am I so obsessed with failure and absurdity?
Is it enough to mock the absurdity of our times with absurd objects and criticize the failures of our society with performances that invite failure? Are they powerful enough to cause conflict in the real world and crack the entrenched walls of belief? Are they merely harmless tantrums, acceptable jokes that demonstrate the flexible tolerance of the system? How can we overcome this situation?
--- p.13

The strength that sustains a community comes from a harsh and unforgiving environment.
It comes from empathy for the misfortune and suffering of others.
And above all, it comes from the fact that we all share the inevitable fate of death and oblivion.
Loss and grief create community.
Community arises from the anxiety and uncertainty of existence.
For a person who has no sorrow, joy, or anxiety to share, there can be no neighbors or community.

--- p.54

A world like Emmental cheese full of holes, a foggy and labyrinthine era where what we really need to see is in our blind spots and things we don't need to see occupy our vision.
In this kind of scenery, can we continue talking about beyond the horizon, beyond the rainbow?
Can we speak of a utopia beyond the vanishing point?
Who would believe that?

--- p.99

I hope my writing and drawings aren't idle chatter, but rather awkward silence.
I hope it will be an uncomfortable experience to face the moment when you don't know what to do.
But is my work strong enough to do that now?
Is this silence enough to silence speech?

--- p.105

The map these writings draw will be a map of the forest, a map of branches and roots, a map of a maze full of paths that break along the way.
Let's accept that there is no system, that this is a wandering without a destination, and do this with an attitude of inaction.
We will find out later whether it was idling or just idle chatter.
Maybe it doesn't matter to me what the outcome will be.

--- p.116

Questions of the past fade into memory and new questions take their place.
By missing important questions, the plan to create a complete list remains incomplete, and new questions arise, leading us to question whether the plan was flawed in the first place.
Is a life that leads from question to question better than a life without questions?

--- p.118

A ladder is the minimum tool for climbing upwards.
The sight of a person climbing up a few wooden sticks instead of stone steps is incomparably shabby compared to the movements of a bird taking flight.
It is a reckless challenge to risk falling without knowing what awaits you when you reach the top.
But if not, what is human life?

--- p.158

What I do may not be art.
Probably so.
Although I exhibit at art galleries and constantly write about art under the name of an artist, it is not clear whether my work is art, a metacritique of art, or a way of thinking that borrows the appearance of art.
Have I been making the art I should be making, or have I been wasting my time commenting, criticizing, and sometimes ridiculing other people's art?
I should be working on my own art, not commenting on other people's art, but I feel like I haven't even started yet.

--- p.196

Do I still have an impossible dream?
--- p.199

The territory called art cannot help but continue to expand.
Since the masters of art history and their contemporary veterans occupy key locations, newcomers avoid the busy streets they occupy and seek out niches like back alleys and basements, or if that doesn't work, they escape to the suburbs or new towns where there is still vacant land and find their own settlements there.
Artists disperse outward, not knowing whether the settlement will be incorporated into the city of art or become an unknown, isolated island outside its boundaries.

--- p.223

People won't believe me, but I've been joking for 40 years.
A joke that makes worldly extras like hammers, shoe brushes, and shovels appear as the main characters and make them babble philosophically and politically, a joke that blurs the line between nothing and everything, a joke that is so serious and serious that you can't tell if it's a joke, serious, or small talk, and you can't tell when to laugh, a joke that only works for people who have a hard time accepting the world.
It is not just empty talk that is said to kill time because there is nothing else to say.
These are the tears that were not shed in a world that was so incredibly ridiculous.

--- p.253

We are forced to see the world not as it is, but through arbitrary filters of our own making, and we have lost sight of other worlds beyond the one we have been given.
A new beginning begins with this desperate realization.
There is no horizon.
We will remake the horizon.

--- p.264

What makes me an artist? What makes me a human? Can I truly be called an artist, a human, by aloofly pursuing my own salvation in the face of ugly war, the collapse of universal values, shameless politics, and a desperate ecological crisis?
--- p.284

I still believe that art has an ethical responsibility to its time and reality, and I find it difficult to accept, as a contemporary or as an artist, artists who abandon or reject this role.
The times and reality are the basis for my art and the reason I do art.

--- p.285

We record it, we memorize it, we put it in a box, we nail it, we chain it, we bury it in the ground, we carve it in stone, we build monuments, we write books.
Most of them disappear soon after.
The stories I wanted to leave behind did not remain, and only the desire to leave behind them remained, and they became ownerless tombstones, rusty emblems, and wandered around with a completely different meaning to strangers who did not know me and I did not know them.
I would be happy if someone could find the light I left behind in the rubble, but by then, neither joy nor I would be there.

--- p.286