Shin Kyung-Hee
Sleeping City

November 24 - December 8 2000

Since the 1990's, Shin Kyung-Hee has been working with symbolic images based on her childhood memories. And in this exhibition, "Sleeping City", she has enlarged her theme to include a wider cultural history.

In "Sleeping City", Shin Kyung-Hee alludes to the hope of the past and the memory of the present by using emblematic images of the ancient cultures, such as Egyptian Pyramid, Greek Columns, Roman Acquaduct. She considers the 'city' as a structure containing all the multiplicities of life and a locus where traces of the passage of time and civilization can be found. Using the city as a metaphor, she shows a different aspects of a society; the positive and the negative, hopes and despairs, renovation and destruction of cultures.

To make her compounded images, Shin Kyung-Hee uses materials familiar from her childhood such as wooden blocks and cotton wool of the stuffed toys. For one part of this exhibition, "Sleeping City" she has used multiple wooden panels each showing a single image, and when assembled together become a large story board. These wooden panels are carefully prepared with layers of varnish and painted in subtle colors. In each panel, there are clearly defined images of ordinary objects, such as bottles, leaves, boxes, a mirror, steps...etc.

In the other paintings of the current exhibition, they are images of the enlarged architectural details boldly represented in near monochrome palette. In these large paintings, the background is made of tight bundles of unbleached cotton thread, giving a soft carpet-like surface. And the images are made of small square blocks of wood layed in regular patterns following the outline of the architectural details, such as columns and arches. The contrast between the softness of the background and the hardness of the wooden tiles, as well as the strong color contrasts create a powerful visual impact.

She studied painting at the College of Fine Art in Seoul National University, and printmaking at the Graduate School, Tyler School of Art, Temple University in Philadelphia. She received the Suk-Nam Arts and Cultural Foundation Award in 1996 and won the Grand Prize of the Kong-San Fine Arts Festival in 1994.