Faith Moves Man and Opens Their Eyes

“Faith, they say, can move mountains.” But if it is indeed humans who possess faith, then perhaps it is humans who move the mountains. In Man Who Moves a Mountain (2025), Bae Junhyun presents scenes where figures appear to be carrying or shifting mountains. The sight of someone carrying a mountain may look like a scene from a play. It can be read as humorous or absurd, yet whether the scene is staged or not—whether it is deliberately composed or not—we find ourselves seriously observing and analyzing what is happening on the stage of painting. What we thought was a mountain is not as large as one, and the person carrying it is not godlike but rather pitiful. Has this mountain just been brought here, or is it being taken elsewhere? Are the many hands acting as one, or is there someone getting in the way? Ultimately, is the person (presumably) behind the mountain even human? We cannot know—but perhaps it is precisely because we cannot know that we believe. We believe because he could be human, and because we are human.

Faith is directed toward what is unseen and arises from where it cannot be seen. In such moments, we reach belief not through what is directly revealed, but through traces and fragments that suggest meaning. In his work, we assign context and narrative, which mirrors the human process of arriving at belief. Faith, which can be both ridiculous and sincere, exists not only within the scenes of painting. The way people believe often involves wandering—like those who carry mountains without seeing the path ahead. The figure in Gardener (2025) embodies this aspect of faith. At first glance, he seems surrounded by plants, but on closer inspection, the branches are artificial. The world encircling this person might be a man-made construct, or perhaps it is part of a delusion unfolding atop a table. Even the person attaching branches could himself be an artificial creation—made of glue, no less. Such ‘unknowing’ speaks to humanity’s anxious yet earnest yearning for understanding.

The fleeting images that arise while viewing a painting become an invitation to peer into its hidden side. At first glance, nothing happens in his paintings. Indeed, within painting, everything appears as if it naturally should. Like theater, cinema, or even dreams, painting shows events as though their occurrence were inevitable. In this sense, the title Nothing Happens (2025) feels apt. Perhaps it is our human desire that seeks meaning in these still scenes. Yet the title also carries a tone of disbelief—of gentle irony. When someone sees a human—or even a holy figure resembling Christ—in the fur of a dog’s backside, one person may rejoice and call it a miracle, while another dismisses it as mere coincidence. Still, people continue to invest traces with hope, to find signs in what cannot be seen, to sense omens of disaster or redemption. Our expectations toward art—and painting in particular—often reach beyond fiction.

In what is unseen lies both anxiety and hope—as in Remaining Things (2025), where animal bones coexist with an intact golden tooth. We believe, perhaps, in order to comfort ourselves. Faith moves people—it moves their gaze and their hearts, even when nothing seems to happen. By subtly placing clues within the familiar stage of painting, He visualizes the mechanisms of human perception. What we take as real depends, quite literally, on how we think. Like children playing house, we project sanctity, catastrophe, desire, and expectation onto shapes and marks. What the artist calls “layers of interpretation” refers not so much to a temporal accumulation, but to the leaps and disjunctions that transcend it. In The Whispering (2025), the intermingling of smoke and foliage contrasts with the solid ground below, revealing the force that breaks linear relations—the power of belief in the image. When we believe in images, the blind may open their eyes, and the one who could not stand may finally rise.

Yuki Konno