Page 20 - Art First: Simon Morley: Lost Horizon

if we wipe off all the dust, the mirror sparkles. Or, as Song Chol writes:
‘You have to open the eye of the heart, the eye that sees everything clearly’.

King Qin, the fisherman, Hugh Conway and Daumal’s voyagers, are all symboliz-
ing a deep truth: the Utopia they’re dreaming of is actually right here, right now.
Beyond the evocation of fabled lands, where life is ‘a lasting delight’, East Asian
painting implies something very different: it says that if we really wish to find

Utopia we must refuse to search outside ourselves. Why? Because if we search
out side ourselves, we will only succeed in distancing ourselves from what the
dream ultimately signifies: we will always place it far away, beyond the horizon.
e ‘infinite’ of the absolute in this sense is not something that is beyond us, but

rather something that is in our midst.

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In my exhibition I’ve approached this complex theme tangentially and elliptically,
using as my focus the movie Lost Horizon, and roping in along the way other
points of reference from literature and art, East and West.

I’ve also used this occasion to try out some new styles and techniques, including
working on hanji—Korean mulberry paper—and mounting works in East Asian
formats, such as the hanging-scroll and the folding ‘concertina’ album. In these
ways I reference the fact that I’ve been living in Korea for a while. I also seem

to have an aversion to horizons.