VOL.93/2026.04

The Attitude of Looking Beneath the Surface

Graphic Designer’s Pick

2026.01.05

Everyone lives with a few hidden selves. It will be nearly impossible to know everything about who we are. The self we are at work is different from the self we are at home; different again with friends, with a lover, when eating together with others, and when eating alone. Some versions of ourselves appear only in certain situations or through certain people, while others never surface at all.
In Gaeul in Glasses, author Lee Yoon-Hee quietly unfolds the inner lives of animals living within human society. Once the humans leave the house, the family dog and a stray cat spend the afternoon baking bread and enjoying tea together. This stray cat, in turn, knows another side of the neighborhood’s old man, infamous for his sour temperament. While his older brother is away from home, Gaeul puts on his brother’s glasses and lives in his place, coming to learn secrets that had never been known. Through these scenes, the author seems to regard the hidden sides of beings we so easily overlook with quiet tenderness. It feels as though she is gently reminding us that if we pay just a little more attention, we might come to see the true selves of those who appear prickly on the surface but are kind at heart, or of those known as miserly who are, in fact, quietly feeding several stray cats. The illustrations?warm yet faintly lonely, shy yet quietly assured?deepen the pleasure of the story. Small, thoughtful touches are scattered throughout. The blue party hat resting on Gaeul’s head as he receives his brother’s birthday meal overlaps with the blue fur hat his brother wore when he left, gently suggesting that Gaeul and his brother remain connected beings. Even while apart, the feelings of family seem to travel between them. These delicate details wait patiently across the pages, inviting the reader to slow down and look closely.

When Attitudes Become Artwork is an art essay that traces the works of contemporary artists and the attitudes through which they view art and the world. The author, Park Bo-Na, attempts “to read the world through the works of contemporary artists who share similar attitudes.” Here, “attitudes” refer to holding questions about the way the world appears to us. Take, for example, the American contemporary artist Byron Kim and his work Synecdoche, a series composed of monochrome panels that reproduce the skin tones of people around him. The work prompts us to begin questioning.
We commonly divide humanity into categories such as Yellow, Black, or White, based on skin color, yet even within the same so-called race, skin tones are never identical. To be honest, I am not even certain whether Koreans can truly be described as “yellow.” There are a few people around me whose skin I would actually call that color. The category of “yellow” itself feels vague, and labels like “flesh-colored,” “sky-colored,” or even “dirt-colored” reveal a quiet violence embedded in naming. Gradually, the thought emerges that things we believed to be different are often not so different after all, while those that appeared similar may, in fact, be profoundly distinct. Following this line of thinking further, we come to realize how many things we pass over without truly seeing, how often we blur what lies before us, and how many judgments we make while pretending to know?armed with a fragile way of thinking woven from accumulated acts of overlooking.
Art may not offer solutions to the problems of the world. Yet, perhaps it allows us to discover questions. By learning to ask those questions anew in our own way, or by refining our attitude toward them, we may eventually encounter a version of ourselves that has quietly grown a little broader.

Written by Lee Ki-Joon (graphic designer)