Sun-Joo Shin, Youngeun Museum of Contemporary Art
Birth
1972, Busan
Genre
Painting, Sculpture, Photography
Homepage
Maniere-noir-recessed_curated by Lee Ji Min
The solo exhibition of Sun-Joo Shin entitled “Maniere-noir: recessed” is distinctive in that it allows viewers to see charming pieces in gray tones which impart diverse feelings, including the quietness and mysteriousness of recessed buildings in black, the deafness arising from recessed space within space, the stillness of blackness, and many others all at once.
The subjects of Shin’s works?exterior walls or other parts of buildings?may be inorganic, yet they have a sense of place and culture; nevertheless, they neither reveal their symbolic features nor want to be perceived as famous places. They are simply spaces that happen to be leave an impression on the artist. As the nondescript titles of her works (such as 'Black Door' and 'Black Window') readily suggest, the artist associates with these subjects directly and intuitively.
Shin rubs the entire canvas with soft, sticky oil pastel using her thumb and then sketches on this surface by scratching with a sharp needle or awl, as if doing openwork or carving. In this way, she reproduces photo images through a scratching action, resulting completed works that describe even the most delicate fine lines. This resembles Mezzotint, an artistic technique also dubbed 'Maniere-noir.' In her paintings, Shin applies this technique, which was historically used to duplicate paintings in the time before the invention of photography, incessantly revisiting what has already been accepted as well as more abstract ways of thinking. She not only forms an indirect consensus about places she has never visited in person but also reproduces memories in a way that bears resemblance to the reproducibility of photography (according to her artist's statement).
This exhibition manifests the painterly transformation of Sun-Joo Shin’s style and is an opportunity to consider and share Shin’s artistic vision, expresses the stateliness of buildings using the intense contrast of black and white as well as unique composition.
