Once Were uses a human-maintained public garden as a space for considering the relationship between nature, space, and things that are chosen to remain or are removed. The paintings present a seemingly timeless sky, dense and overgrown vegetation in the background, and carefully arranged grass and shrubs in the foreground. The garden therefore emerges through the organization of nature according to a form determined by humans.

     The work initially began as two frames in the creative process, created to form one continuous space before being separated into two individual works upon completion, First Once and Second Once. The separation of the images turns a once-continuous space into two parts with distance between them. At the same time, things that once existed within the garden are made to reappear in forms that do not correspond to their surroundings.

     In First Once, glowing grass flowers appear in the space. Grass flowers are among the first things removed in the making of a garden. In Second Once, a tree that does not correspond to the size and position of the space appears again. This tree is something that was cut down during the process of landscaping. The light of both the grass flowers and the tree in the two works likewise do not refer to the surrounding conditions of illumination. What has been removed therefore does not disappear completely, but returns to appear again as a trace of something that once existed there. Light makes these things appear differently from their surroundings, as if it is an existence that remains after the space has already been organized.

     Once Were therefore considers the relationship between space, distance, time, and memory through the organization of a garden and the separation of the images. What once existed does not necessarily return in its original form, but can reappear through traces, memory, and conditions that allow its existence to remain perceptible.