JEENA SHIN

Jeena Shin’s paintings critically examine the spatial properties that inhere in a reticulated network of fold lines. They also probe the visual and spatial resonances produced by varying the intensities of a single colour. Her works acknowledge that colour is deceptive, relative, and duplicitous. The artist is keenly aware of what Josef Albers has already noted, ‘with colour we do not see what we see. Because colour, as the most relative medium in art has innumerable faces or appearances’.

Whilst meticulously crafted by hand, the subject matter of Shin’s paintings exemplify the propensity for ‘Shiftiness’ found within the digital design realm. Her collections of planes overlay one another, so that interior and exterior spaces are seamlessly enfolded. Her works also reveal multiple viewpoints concurrently. Dependent upon the location of the viewer and the changing intensity of natural light, Shin’s work reveals or conceals particular qualities of the paintings.

From a substantial distance, the works resemble monolithic monochromes. However, viewed at a middle distance, the reticulated network of folded planes and the surfaces formed between them are disclosed. Close up, one can admire the taut, polished finish of the painted surfaces and the thick, immaculately rendered crease lines formed by the accumulated layers of pigment. Shin’s works probe the interstitial spaces found within folded surfaces. Contingent upon viewer position, their undulating, serpentine forms are revealed or concealed from view. Through her strategic deployment of the oblique, Shin generates painterly spaces of rich complexity.