The Jeju province-operated Kim Tschang-yeul Art Museum is holding a special exhibition titled “École de Paris: Shin Sung Hy” in Exhibition Room 1 until November 27.

Shin Sung Hy made his debut in the art world upon winning the Special Prize at the 2nd Korean Art Grand Award Exhibition in 1971 and created his own unique artistic universe during a sojourn of around 30 years after relocating to Paris, France in 1980. Throughout a career of around 40 years, his paintings underwent four major changes at decade-long intervals.

▲ Source: Kim Tschang-yeul Art Museum

In the 1970s, he produced burlap paintings made by painting on burlap material, then showcased a method of sticking together hand-torn pieces of cardboard into a collage upon relocating to Paris in 1980.

Until the mid-1990s, he worked on embroidering the canvas into bands of set sizes, and in 1997, he invented the “nouage” method of tying strings in all directions from a canvas frame and painting on top of it, thereby creating three-dimensional paintings.

Shin Sung Hy was also a close acquaintance of Kim Tschang-yeul, an artist known for paintings of water drops. It was Kim who persuaded Shin, one of his students at Seoul Arts High School at the time, to relocate to Paris, and the two artists spent a significant amount of time working together in Paris. Kim Tschang-yeul’s eulogy for Shin Sung Hy, who departed earlier in 2009, struck a chord among many.

▲ Source: Kim Tschang-yeul Art Museum

At this exhibition, 19 pieces of art by Shin Sung Hy will be showcased, demonstrating tireless efforts to surpass fixed preconceptions towards images and planarity by combining flat planes and the three-dimensional.

Director Oh Seong-ryul of the Jeju Culture and Sports External Cooperation Department commented, “We hope that the exhibition will help visitors to reflect on the space and depth of life itself through the work of artist Shin Sung Hy, which surpass the flat surface to embody three-dimensional space.”