Expositions passées
Having focused on women and abstract art in 2024, the Lee Ungno Museum is proud to showcase the work of Shin Jung-deok (1949~), a Daejeon-based abstract painter, for this exhibition. Shin has spent his 40-year career striving to answer one question—how should life be portrayed? While doing so, he has pushed back the boundaries of abstract art by crossing freely between the realms of materiality, space, and time.
Shin’s art changed significantly in 2000. Contrary to his early creations, which explore life’s primitive power while emphasizing the characteristics of various materials, Shin’s artwork from 2000 onward deconstruct and rearrange nature’s biological phenomena in a way that is unique to the artist. Shin’s brand of abstract is much closer to the unfettered formats of organic abstract than the strictly rule-defined geometric abstract and draws much inspiration from Arshile Gorky’s (1904-1948) biomorphic abstract, a genre grounded in natural phenomena and irregular, spontaneous formats that is also referred to as “biomorphic art.” His creations, the motifs of which are mostly life forms occurring in nature (e.g. flowers, trees) and the human body, open up a new realm of organic beauty in the world of abstract painting.
This exhibition is divided into three sections based on the methods used by Shin to express life. The first section, “Self-recurrence,” presents life as the components that comprise it and concentrates on the notion that everything eventually reverts to such components. The second, “The Rhythm of Life,” highlights Shin’s interest in the biological phenomena of nature through bright, monochromatic paintings. The third section, “Kaleidoscope,” is made up of paintings that visualize Shin’s introspection on life forms that come into being and then disappear over time.
The Lee Ungno Museum hopes that “Shin Jung-deok, Abstract, Life” embodies a modern-day extension of the artistic spirit of Goam Lee Ungno (1904-1989), who experimented with diverse abstract formats throughout his career and was known for his “new style” artworks. It is also our wish that this exhibition celebrates the accomplishments of a prominent local artist who, like Lee, refused to be swayed by circumstances in creating his unique brand of art.
