Traditional iconography of vanitas paintings, such as skulls and butterflies, often appears in Hong Kyoungtack’s work, suggesting a connection to traditional painting. “Skulls I” is an early work by the artist, which attempts to speak about life and death by placing the ‘skull’ itself in the foreground of the work. In the context of the accumulation of not only materials but also still lifes, it shows an early work in which lightness and heaviness, pleasure and pain, color and black and white, pattern and realism intersect. The curved frame next to the horizontally stretched frame is a sculptural representation of the conflicting ambivalent elements in the artist’s inner life in his 20s.