The Reborn Genius of an Arts High School - Chapter 17

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 17
Seo Tae-gyeong, director of the gallery Seo Hwa Won in Seoul, took a deep breath outside Jeong Hae-yun’s studio.
There was only one reason he’d come all this way from Seoul.
He wanted to hold a solo exhibition for Hae-yun.
He was doing his best to coax the artist into accepting an inaugural show.
“Ahem.”
Tae-gyeong gazed with satisfaction at the gift he’d painstakingly prepared.
It was a brush he’d acquired with great difficulty from a master craftsman registered as an Intangible Cultural Property.
Since it was a bribe with a clear purpose, Tae-gyeong had taken extra care.
Jeong Hae-yun was someone notorious for being difficult even in this already demanding field.
A man with both skill and history whom no one dared disrespect, and who knew it all too well himself.
So Tae-gyeong reckoned that openly displaying his purpose and discerning eye would appeal to Hae-yun far more than any half-hearted flattery.
“Oh.”
A staff member who’d been busily clearing away the snow that had fallen overnight recognized Tae-gyeong.
“Director of Seo Hwa Won? What brings you all the way out here?”
Tae-gyeong felt slightly offended by the question, but he spoke as graciously as he could manage.
“I had an appointment to meet with the master today. Is he inside?”
The staff member looked even more flustered at his words.
From that reaction, he intuited the truth.
Hae-yun hadn’t mentioned their appointment to the staff beforehand.
Seo Hwa Won was counted among the top Korean painting galleries in the field.
Yet whenever he came here, this was the treatment he received.
Well, it’s Jeong Hae-yun. Can’t be helped.
“Please wait just a moment.”
The staff member hurried inside and soon returned to show Tae-gyeong in.
At least the staff had manners, which was something to be grateful for.
“Apologies—it’s a bit cluttered inside.”
Just as Tae-gyeong was stepping through the entrance, his footsteps faltered.
……
Inside, dozens of sheets of Hanji—each roughly 20-号 in size—hung suspended throughout the space.
“This… is all…?”
The problem was that every single piece appeared to be the same image, as if copied and pasted.
As he carefully made his way past the paintings, Hae-yun asked curtly.
“What brings you here all of a sudden?”
“Sir, we had an appointment today. Don’t you remember?”
“……Did we?”
Since he’d expected as much, Tae-gyeong made light of it without showing any displeasure.
“You’re so busy, it can’t be helped. Still, I’m glad you’re here.”
Tae-gyeong looked around with a friendly expression on his face.
“But what is all this? These don’t look like your work.”
The paintings on the floor all appeared to be landscape paintings in the Korean style.
Far too conventional in form to be Hae-yun’s.
Yet they weren’t the clumsy sketches of a complete amateur either.
They skillfully preserved the proportion of negative space and gently diffused ink while keeping the boundaries crisp and clear.
There was something about them—an odd boldness and audacity.
“A young student took up some space.”
As Hae-yun naturally led him away from the paintings toward one side, Tae-gyeong’s curiosity deepened.
Hae-yun was known for drawing strict lines with his disciples—uniformly.
Kind word: fair. Harsh word: cold-hearted.
He wouldn’t describe a formally employed assistant that way.
“These are quite good, actually. The skill will need more time to judge, but anyone who can execute work this consistently is no small matter.”
Clearly a talented painter with patience, confidence, and the skill to back it up.
Tae-gyeong offered his genuine praise mixed with curiosity, then ventured a question.
“Who is this person?”
At his question, Hae-yun let out a low chuckle.
‘So this eccentric master can laugh like that,’ thought Tae-gyeong.
Unaware that he was only fueling the director’s curiosity further.
Hae-yun spoke with finality.
“It’s a secret, you fool. Now spit out what you came to say. I’m busy!”
***
This morning, Ye-ji had been cornered by her grandmother and spent hours playing Hwatu Cards with her.
For something meant to prevent dementia, her grandmother played with extraordinary skill.
Ye-ji lost bet after bet—doing dishes, cleaning house.
Only after finishing all the chores could she head to Hae-yun’s studio.
Yet her grandmother seemed genuinely delighted to spend time with her granddaughter, at least.
“Should be dry by now.”
Of course, Ye-ji’s procrastination had its reasons.
After her recent conversation with Hae-yun about her work.
She had painted exactly thirty sheets based on her plan.
She had to carefully balance the concentration and quantity, applying adhesive and acrylic precisely to the Hanji so that the subsequent work could proceed.
Even if Hae-yun possessed data from years of experience, everything shifted slightly depending on circumstances.
Given the high likelihood of failure, she’d prepared multiple sheets to account for it.
“At least some should have worked out.”
Online submission closed in just ten days.
Ye-ji entered Hae-yun’s studio with growing anxiety.
For some reason, the room was empty today.
As she carefully separated out the sheets that had become too glossy and clearly failed.
Someone entered.
“Negative space won’t fly in an international competition, you know?”
The man who cleared snow most often…
Han Gyu, if she remembered his name right.
He was examining the Hanji sheets she’d set aside, his tone suggesting further thought.
“The master told me you’re submitting to a youth competition in Montreal?”
It wasn’t a small competition, and it wasn’t exactly secret, so Ye-ji nodded.
Information exchange among painters mattered, of course, but art had long since become a business.
He’d mentioned Art Management was his major.
Ye-ji was curious what advice he might offer.
“Everyone will come packed with color and technique, trying to show anything and everything.”
When it came to competitions and current trends, nobody was more sensitive than a manager.
Han Gyu gathered the Hanji to be discarded in one pile as he discussed appeal points beyond artistic merit.
“And from what I’ve seen, that competition gives pretty high marks for thematic consciousness.”
Artists ultimately divide on this: what exactly do they want to express?
As Ye-ji listened to Han Gyu’s advice, she grasped what he was driving at.
A hollow shell always shows its emptiness.
For negative space to truly resonate, it needs either the thematic consciousness to fill it, or it shouldn’t be empty at all.
“I’m not planning to leave it completely blank, though…”
Ye-ji removed another ruined painting and turned the question back on him.
“But why would you think I haven’t settled on a proper theme yet?”
“Well…”
Han Gyu fell silent at her counter-question.
At first glance, Ye-ji’s paintings were beautiful.
She’d clearly mastered the aesthetic direction in all of them.
For an eighteen-year-old just entering her senior year of high school to possess such skill was enough to earn the label of genius.
So it seemed unreasonable to expect she’d also conceived a deeply layered theme.
Especially for a child who’d lived a comfortable life under her parents’ full support.
But Ye-ji was no ordinary eighteen-year-old.
Thirty years of memories as a Westerner.
And half that time lived as a Korean.
Not quite the depth that came from simply adding those periods together, but she was hardly just another eighteen-year-old.
“Anyway, I think of Oil Painting as my specialty, and it’s what I do best.”
Oil painting was the archetypal Western medium.
“If I want to reach many people with my work, choosing the medium I’m good at and that communicates effectively is the right choice.”
Art ultimately needs communicative power.
Whether beauty or something else—moving the viewer’s heart.
Fine art was a discipline that didn’t flinch from any means or method to achieve that.
Ye-ji set aside another Hanji that had bunched up from too much acrylic.
For her, this painting was both a pledge and a definition of her direction as a Korean.
To express that, she was drawing on diverse means.
“But ultimately, I am Korean, aren’t I? At my deepest core right now, these kinds of arts have already taken root first.”
Ye-ji wasn’t merely acquiring Eastern Painting technique and know-how from Hae-yun.
Not as a painter recalling Catherine’s memory and technique, but as eighteen-year-old Ye-ji of South Korea.
She was receiving something more spiritual—guidance on the direction she should move as her current self.
“If I’m going to pursue my dream of becoming a world-class artist, I want some of that self reflected in the work.”
The Beauty of Emptiness. The ethnic sensibility held within the depths of ink.
Ye-ji wanted to fully accept and acknowledge these things, then move forward to the next stage.
“That’s what my work is, essentially.”
Of the thirty paintings, only three had dried decently.
Ye-ji pushed the rest of the unsatisfactory sheets aside without hesitation.
“A fusion of my innate roots and my talents?”
The more brilliant something is, the more one must learn it and make it truly one’s own.
That’s the only direction contemporary art moves toward.
Ye-ji knew very well that she was at an age when she could absorb everything.
And generally, adults enjoyed intelligent children who wanted to embrace everything.
A young woman accepting her roots as an Asian and embracing the Western foundation to go global—ambition without unnecessary grandiosity.
Wouldn’t that be the freshest theme, most fitting for a ‘youth competition,’ rather than some overly elaborate concept?
“It’s the kind of theme only an eighteen-year-old high school student can present—and that makes it even more resonant, doesn’t it?”
Growth, pride, distinction and possibility.
Her work would be able to show it all.
Of course, the work couldn’t be all empty words.
It had to be successfully completed as she envisioned and intended.
“……You.”
Han Gyu’s eyes narrowed as he watched Ye-ji speak with such confidence.
Then he looked at her again carefully before speaking.
“You’re really eighteen, right? You didn’t go on some study abroad and come back behind a few years?”
Puzzled by the unusual way an eighteen-year-old thought, Han Gyu asked half in jest, half in earnest.
At the absurd question, Ye-ji simply laughed.
Finally, keeping only the three sheets she’d selected, Ye-ji threw the rest into the trash.
Though covered in various chemicals, they were thin enough that the gloss didn’t completely obscure the Hanji’s texture.
Examining the finished product carefully, Ye-ji marveled at it.
This was truly a secret technique that only a master like Jeong Hae-yun would discover after decades of research.
“All dried properly?”
Hae-yun, arriving late, saw the sight and spoke.
Ye-ji greeted him warmly and held up the Hanji, now stiff and crisp from drying.
“Yes! Completely! It’s amazing, Grandfather!”
Hae-yun thought himself accustomed to praise and admiration by now, but seeing Ye-ji’s genuine joy stirred something unfamiliar in him.
Most people never realize how much an artist’s anguish, experimental spirit, and challenge are woven into art.
They merely ask: why not just print it digitally?
But true artists knew.
Art encompassed the materials used and the process itself.
Watching Ye-ji’s eyes shine anew with passion, Hae-yun spoke.
“Only ten days left now. Can you finish?”
His worry came out as reproach rather than gentle words.
But Ye-ji’s eyes widened, and she answered with utter confidence.
“That’s more than enough.”
The oil painting work ahead was her specialty, after all.
She had no concerns whatsoever.
Only one variable remained: whether what existed in her mind’s sketch would emerge as a beautiful finished piece.
That was the only unknown.
Just as Ye-ji was about to begin work, she suddenly asked.
“Where have you been, though?”
At her question, Hae-yun hesitated in his reply, an unusual moment.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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