Shin Hong-jik's Paintings

‘Whimsical & Fun’

An amusement on the whimsical and excitement of Shin Hong-jik's paintings

In art, "What is freedom?" This is a topic that Shin Hong-jik throws into the world of his work. Human instinct begins with the desire to reveal one's presence based on a free life. The essence of the human spirit is freedom' Hegel said. Then, what is the purpose for humans to live instinctively? When asked, people spend most of their lives devoting themselves to revealing their existence from inside to outside. In particular, artists choose a special way beyond the general attitude of life. Then, in fact, the definition of free expression in art may be a trite question. This is because the pivotal value of the existence of art is a crystal of passion that is drawn from free consciousness.

The attribute of freedom in the work of Shin Hong-jik has a somewhat different meaning from the former, which is not the opposite of the word constraint. It means breaking away from the essence of formal aesthetics, not just as a form or genre of painting. As he traveled through Europe, he encountered the deep-rooted European civilization of the great European masters in luxury art galleries and museums, observed the traditional aesthetics of paintings listed in their works, and the subtle thoughts and many emotions that came as a sharp pressure on him rather than a single artist. It would have been an opportunity to acquire a new form of freedom by directly observing the art history limitations based on illusionistic realism, the aesthetics of old masters' aura and technical expression, as well as the unique sense conveyed to the canvas.

Shin Hong-jik said, "I am not interested in what I want to draw, but how to express my pictorial sense of sculpture through that object."

"We are trying to exaggerate the impressions of nature to enjoy the abstract harmony of the picture, and to maximize the effect, paint quickly on canvas with knives and hands and make viewers feel strange catharsis through the effect of texture," he said.

He emphasizes the pictorial elements of the formative and qualitative characteristics of the work and aims to mediate the appreciation of this contemplative phenomenon from nature. He seems to be immersed in the expression method between the gap between representation and expression of pictorial formability. However, if this concept is merely a visual curiosity to convey to the viewer, there is a concern that the reason for the contradiction that it is already working based on the category of classical aesthetics may arise.

In fact, in Shin's work, we may recall a similarity in general visual representation in the works of ‘William Turner’, Britain's greatest painter of the 19th century, known as landscape paintings of light and color, and Monet's Sunrise Impression. But this is just a coincidence that transcends time. Just as the modern philosophical thinking system of Lacan and Deleuze, which is in opposition to the classical pure rationalist philosophers Kant and Descartes, creates a special genealogical theoretical value between constant arguments to this day, Shin Hong-jik is conscious of Turner's fierceness of fire, water, wind, and bipolar elements. Contrary to his will, the characteristic of the work he is attempting is to build a visual obscura that combines conceptuality by abstracting the afterimage through his own retinal phenomenon, not a generalized view using a simple photographic perspective. Therefore, it is a work of paradoxical meaning that allows officials to directly communicate with the five senses the aspect of the work that has been converted into a "space of consciousness" rather than a "space of reproduction" that follows the process of light, color, and description of the Beast Impressionist landscape using the traditional medium of canvas. The traditional painting style of painting through oil and canvas, which he has painted in his 60 years, may be a new discovery of a conscious series of pictorial orders, or aesthetic codes, expressed from freedom of life, not just passion and energy. In addition, the delicate touch of the hand, which is part of a dynamic body, not a brush, is not only his new mechanism, but also encompasses all the spirit and soul, such as a kind of "flow of energy" that gathers all the minds with his fingertips. His hands and gestures, sometimes sweet, majestic, sometimes fast and dynamic, like Maestro, who directs Hungarian Rhapsody, are an expression of his soul, and his instant improvisation means his visual provocation, completing the work with a terrifying concentration of all passion and sweat on the canvas.

In fact, the recent tendency of contemporary painting has already deviated from the labor and temporal nature of the work. It's not an era when applying a lot of paint to canvas space for a lot of time unconditionally makes it a good work. Emphasizing labor for the perfection of the work in many cases, the craftsman himself is trapped. In the methodology of painting, he has built a sense of making this phenomenon into the instantaneous and fun elements of the already intended medium in the methodology of painting. The sensuous and popular icon of creating an icon by manipulation, which is common in painting works these days, is avoided and a new modern absolute purity aesthetics is embodied. 

In his work, sometimes Gogh's touch is visible, and the boldness and bizarre color of whimsical Beastism are found. It is far from a well-trimmed and elegant color sense, and his combination process and bold melody, which seem to transcend time and space, are intuition that sensory play is well designated. This is a refinement of the state of matter that light is not just a natural color of form through objects, but a provocative color learned from Baroque madness. According to Goethe's theory of color, brightness begins with yellow in all colors and darkness begins with blue. It refers to pure sensory acceptance through the human eye rather than the theory of spectrum technology of scientific color. The density of colors and the way they are implemented are only processing mechanical aesthetics. His selection of colors is also very interesting. From the perspective of reproduction of the present nature of modern art, this may be underestimated as an anachronistic artist's expression method. 

However, all of this is just an optical illusion of momentary immersion. The color density of his native area is due to his primacy. It prefers an instinctive nostalgia for raw things and an unpolished and simple aesthetic, and derives a fairly theatrical and adventurous taste based on modern sensibility. Looking at his series of works, it is not anachronistic conceptual painting by existing Korean artists, which was a simple expression of a conceptual image. Sophistic freedom such as "Rosell Basquiat," a modern genius painter, is providing a pleasant visual play to the batter with honest textures and layers such as the classical painter ‘Georges Luo’. Sometimes the expression of Christopher Wool's swirling line of abstract allegiances is also shown. In particular, the "Time Square" scenery of Manhattan in the U.S. is not just an urban atmosphere that expresses allegorical shapes, but conveys the madness of the advanced and colorful urban civilization of the world at the same time. This also becomes a ‘soul-scape’ that is converted into consciousness rather than the landscape described. In other words, it is a conversational rhetoric as an expressive means that is exchanged from snobs such as the scraps of consciousness and desire.

“Clement Greenberg,’ one of the greatest art historians of the century, points to the limitations of the ‘flatness’ of modernity paintings and explains the expansion of pure modernism in the meaning of formalism aesthetics, but ultimately peaks in Jackson Pollock's painting values." Contemporary Art is an infinite confrontation and coexistence in the vast art landscape. There is still a complementary relationship to the difficulty and ambiguity of contemporary art, and his theory is also under way, arguing for differences with Roselind Krauss, an art historian known as the epitome of contemporary art criticism Some point out the philosophical discourse and fiction of contemporary art sharply.

Shin Hong-jik's concept of painting is not a sensory expression of an experimental approach to planar space, but a catharsis of a kind of ritual excretion and a metaphysical formative language in canvas space based on sophisticated aesthetic consciousness. Physically, repeatedly painted on the canvas and excessively strong and fast, stroke is an expression of a willingness to transcend the flatness of a thick surface and, on the other hand, an implied gesture of redemption for change and difference. This may be Jacques Derrida's dismantlingist ritual, but rather, it is a struggle of consciousness to constantly rebuild a new formative space. Therefore, it is a desperate struggle to overcome the limitations of ‘flatness’ and evolve one's theory of painting from the past tendency of conceptual modernism to a new methodical skepticism.

Modern artist ‘Donald Judd’ advocated breaking away from the critical point of existing flatness, destroying the framework of the ‘grid shape’ and opening a new horizon of "special object," a work with strong installation elements. World-class artists have always evolved by presenting new forms of methodology, conflicting with existing formative and aesthetic concepts. In addition, the world-renowned artist Takashi Murakami's "Super Flat" has become a global artist, starting with the skepticism of flatness about Japanese culture and expanding the concept to fuse world culture to bring down the boundaries of art, such as childish and excessive expression of Japanese comics and the aesthetics of pure art. Now, it is a world where you can receive attention only when you build your own special conceptual formative will in a mixture of trends.

Shin Hong-jik's flowers, nature, sunrise and sea, overflowing waves, and symbolic forms of ambiguity, lightness, etc. about objects captured by the artist are actually visual languages triggered by Korean excitement and pleasure, and the visual metaphor in his work acts as a ‘signifian’ element, and the construction of surface bumps through deep insight is quite strong. The sky, sea, and person he paints can be an implied representation of heaven, earth, and man based on oriental thought, and can be inferred as a wave of cosmic energy, a center of transcendental space that unfolds human life. The one-point human’s image is a metaphor and symbol of the loneliness and alienation of modern people wandering. The more you look at it, the longer there is a speciality of visual thinking that keeps our eyes on. Then, what the artist intends to say beyond that, the artist must now answer in visual language by casting specifically the implications of the freedom, not coercion.

His hand touch and fingerling work in progress transcends the limitation of expressiveness of 'plane reproduction' in an unspecified area of pictorial approach, not the use of conventional painting tools, and these factors can be found in Korean style and excitement. Now, he has to create a new aesthetic value that combines the world's cheering epic and universal discourse beyond K-Pop and K-Culture in the intersection between aesthetic uniqueness and mass-based Western expression derived from traditional Korean fun and satire. If an artist fails to provide social issues and discourses, he will be just an epigone artist who mediates only visual sensibilities to people.

The trajectory and total volume of Shin Hong-jik's works are so heavy and huge that no one can dare to surpass them. On this basis, the engine of discourse of philosophical aesthetics, not just artist's beliefs, should be added, and it is time to move his base beyond domestic activities to the global stage amid this sense of mission. In fact, I am ashamed of the tendency to characterize the main flow of contemporary Korean art with monochromatic paintings (Dansakwha). In addition, of course, there are many artists such as installation art, abstract art, and media art, but they are very intimidating. In addition to dismissing ‘Dansakwha’ as the result of mentality and the performance of 'imitation of the process', the concept of global expansion is still weak. Now, we have to challenge the world stage with various experimental works. This includes artist Shin Hong-jik. Aftermath, his role and responsibilities are huge in Korean art scene. He should adopt some of ‘Kitsch’ to gain for popularity, which is called a sub-culture the spirit of the time and avant-garde era has always existed in the present progressive form, causing great repercussions in the long history of art. We look forward to a new version of his new strategic aesthetics with a contemporary avant-garde spirit out of his free passions.

 Lee Bung-Lyol (Art critic, independent curator, CEO of IACO Agency)