Even after completing my first exhibition at Sangsangmadang Gallery, I was still at a stage where I did not yet feel fully confident in my work. Through this exhibition, I met Sung Nam-Hun and several other actively practicing artists, which gave me the opportunity to think more deeply about my position, artistic character, and future possibilities as an artist.
I also took part in an artist talk for the first time, meeting the public and speaking directly to an audience about the conceptual world and motivations behind my work, as well as the stories embedded within the images. It became an opportunity to move one step beyond making the work itself and to think about, and put into practice, how I wanted to communicate it to an audience in a public setting.
For this exhibition, Fujifilm produced one of my works at approximately two meters in size. At that scale, the impact of the large-format print and the detailed human stories unfolding within the image became far more visible than before. Along with the visual satisfaction of seeing the work at a larger scale, I experienced firsthand how the size of a work could amplify the power of an image. From that point on, I began working with a two-meter print as the benchmark for the final presentation of my work.
This experience became a major turning point in everything that followed. It gave me the confidence to move into a wider world and helped me define the direction I wanted to pursue.