SHIM MOON-SEUP

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Featuring more than 30 canvas works, this expansive showcase serves as a pivotal moment in Shim’s career, providing a reflective journey through his most impactful creations and illuminating the creative processes and thematic explorations that have shaped his unique practice. The exhibition will highlight paintings that express a deep reverence for nature and its cycles. Shim’s work explores the interplay of blue hues that evoke the texture of the sea, capturing the inherent qualities of materials and their relationship with the viewer. Central to his artistic practice are the themes of nature and temporality, which he employs as core elements.

“My center is always in the sea”

• SHIM Moon-Seup

For Shim, the subject of the sea holds great significance, profoundly shaping his artistic expression. Growing up in the southern coastal city of Tongyeong, he developed a deep connection with nature. This early exposure has influenced his perspective on how artists can reinterpret and ‘re-present’ the world.

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Regarding the role of the artist in the human-nature relationship, he believes one of the key responsibilities of contemporary artists is to make nature visible as a living entity.

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Shim often seeks different feelings and expressions by applying bright colours to the canvas before going over them with dark paints. The juxtaposition of darkness and light, horizontals and verticals, and the ebb and flow of elements do not oppose one another; rather, they reflect a cycle of erasure and rebirth, much like nature itself. He delivers this dynamic on his canvas by creating a balanced state and layering his performative time in an abstract manner. Rather than focusing on the composition of the canvas on the surface, Shim focuses on the materiality of the canvas itself. His pursuit of new art forms and experimental approaches has become an important influence on many young Korean artists today.

“Shim’s pieces about time are invisible, abstract and poetic. To explain further, Shim displays the abstract coalescence of performative time.”

– Chinese art critic Huang Du

“The combination of large-format works, in which viewers can immerse themselves, and simple compositions based on identical, repeated gestures suggests the existence of a space beyond the canvas.”

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– Greek visual artist Dimitris Lempesis