Jeena Shin
Shadow Line
‘The paperfold is a dynamic artefact, unstable and evolving.’[1]
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’.[2]
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.[3] From a substantial distance, the works resemble monolithic monochromes. However, viewed at a middle distance, the reticulated network of folded planes and the spaces 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.
Rachel Carley
Notes:
[1] Sophia Vyzoviti, Folding Architecture: Spatial, Structural and Organizational Diagrams, California: Gingko Press, 2003, p.9.
[2] Josef Albers, Interaction of Color, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963, p. x.
[3] Shin’s delicately graduated colour palette reacts dramatically to minor fluctuations in day lighting.
This text is an edited excerpt from Rachel Carley, Shadow Line, Auckland: Roger Williams Contemporary, 2006. Reproduced with kind permission of Rachel Carley and Roger Williams Contemporary, Auckland.
Jeena Shin artist bio:
Born Seoul, 1973
Lives and works in Auckland
Bachelor of Fine Arts, Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland
Master of Fine Arts, RMIT University, Melbourne
Selected solo exhibitions include: 'Shadow Line', Roger Williams Contemporary (2006); 'Lux', Show, Wellington (2004); 'Plane', Ramp Gallery, Hamilton (2003); 'Twofold', Ivan Anthony Gallery, Auckland (2000); and 'The Fold', Ivan Anthony Gallery, Auckland (1999).
Selected group exhibitions include: 'SNO22 Sydney Non Objective 2006, Sydney (2006); 'Respirator', Conical Gallery, Melbourne (2006); 'Transmission', 64zero3 Gallery, Christchurch (2005); 'New New Zealand Art', MOP Projects, Sydney (2004); 'Changing Times in Painting: 6 Artists from New Zealand', Conny Dietzschold Gallery, Sydney (2003).
Image credits:
Jeena Shin
Untitled 2007
acrylic paint
Courtesy of the artist