KIM YongChul

Fluid Urban Scenes Derived from Familiarity

Artist Shin Soo-hyeok reconstructs the past from the present things we consider familiar. Shin encapsulates fluid urban scenes in his work through the act of ‘drawing’, bringing personal experience and perception into buildings and places. Shin’s pursuit of memories began in 2002, when he left for Japan to study. At the time, Shin realized as an observing explorer of his surroundings he could work with psychology to make unfamiliar scenes familiar. He sensitively felt subtle differences among urban spaces in his daily life, and within his energy he sensed space through bodily experience. With this as motif, he uses his body as measuring device, and produces serene, hypnotic images from his experience, based on his sensibilities and psychology. He works consciously to discover daily fragments in fluid world, interweaving social, temporal, and cultural aspects extracted from his memories.
 Such works were displayed in his solo show, One Day Somewhere, at One & J Gallery in 2009. Map-related work, pencil drawings, an installations to help understand this work were all on display. Map-related work began when he was inspired by visa-stamps. In the work he confirmed places he visited on the map, and recorded them with the stamp marks refers to one becoming familiar to the place.
 A complete image using figure-stamps looks like an aerial photograph, but appears ambiguous so any specific notion of a place remains vague. This show was a visualization of memories and a recontextualization of bodily experience through which Shin feels the world familiar.
 His map-related work developed into drawing work in which he minutely depicted a specific part of the building, but abbreviated other elements except for the building in a white background. In this series the building looks like floating in the air. Unlike his previous series employing an aerial perspective, this work spread horizontally, and is rendered through an act of ‘drawing’. Although this series is equal to his previous pieces in that it chronicles the spaces he experieced, this work shows he understands the true nature of an object in the place where the object stays (interior) rather than in the place where he stays(exterior).
 It is necessary here to pay attention to his work’s labor-intensive process. The underpainting completed by applying gesso several times, and refined and objectively rendered pencil lines obviously show his intention to express exchange of intimate, clandestine feelings accumualted in a building.
 His recent paintings appear more delicate and dense, fusing the concepts and ways of the two series above mentioned. The paintings maintain the map’s blue color sense, the stamp’s light feel, a building revealed by light, minute ground work in monotone, and buildings in a certain distance, but in these works time is adjusted by the intensity of light, and abbreviated background reappear.
 Shin’s work – rebuilding realistic structures; highlighting personal memories – is a response to deficiencies he senses in the world, which he supplements through painting. Through his work Shin recreates the world he sees with value he secures through his sense, unconsciousness, and memory, questioning where his body is while infiltrating the object.
This month’s artist-Shin Soohyeok, November, 2010 in Public Art.

SHIN SooHyeok
Born in 1967, Seoul, Korea

EDUCATION
2008    D.F.A, Oil Painting Course, Tokyo National University of Fine Arts
             and Music, Japan
2005    M.F.A, Oil Painting Course, Tokyo National University of Fine Arts
             and Music, Japan
1996    M.F.A, Painting, Graduate school of Fine Arts, Hong-ik  University, Korea
1994    B.F.A, Painting, College of Fine Arts, Hong-ik University, Korea

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITION
2013    Cyanotype, Boutique Monaco museum, Seoul, Korea
2011    Blue Note, ART SIDE  Gallery, Seoul, Korea
2009    Oneday, Somewhere, ONE & J Gallery, Seoul, Korea
2008    Musee  F gallery, Tokyo, Japan
2007    Underneath Time, Tomos Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
2006    Gallery-58, Tokyo, Japan
2004    Oneday Somewhere, Gallery Gan, Tokyo, Japan

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITION
2013    ART Gwang-Ju 2013, Promotion Exhibition, Bloody Trial, Gwangju, Korea
2012    Artistic period, Inter alia Art Company, Seoul, Korea
             Urban Promade, Pohang Museum of Art, Pohang, Korea
             Out of Frame, Inter alia Art Company, Seoul, Korea
2011    Maps Talk, Art+Lounge Dibang, Seoul, Korea
             G-11 Art Fair, Raum, Seoul, Korea
2010    Paintings ? Now, Things that are express, Gana Art Space, Seoul, Korea
2009    3th Echigo, 3th Echigo-Tsumari  Art Triennial 2006, Niegata, Japan