Nature’s Boundary and Beyond

Shin’s paintings originate from nature. Shin adopted the organic, free-form shapes and gestures as the foundation of her works from observing various facets of nature, such as the flow of air, the shifting of light, the colors of plants, and the movements of animals. The absence of figurative forms in abstract painting poses a minor barrier for viewers as the urge to interpret, the most basic human instinct in observing images is denied. Yet, the same provides abstract painting its proprietary strength, the ability to express unseeable (and thus undepictable) things — the heat felt from light, the motion of the wind, and the vitality felt from living beings — through elements like composition, color, and mark-making, lending Shin’s paintings the ability to incite a wide range of emotions within the viewer.

Of various natural phenomena, Shin’s interest in light particularly influences her entire oeuvre. Aiming to capture light in its entirety — not only as the driver of visual perception but also as the deliverer of energy outside the visible spectrum — Shin uses cameras to capture the diverse scenes of light in nature and sometimes emboldens these through staging. This research is then expressed in various mediums: photographs are reborn as paintings or used as works of art in themselves. Shin also creates experimental installations employing translucent acrylic panels and lighting and is currently exploring stained glass, her latest fascination.

Boasting sensual usage of colors and unique handling of oil paint, Shin’s unique visual language is requisite to how she captures light effectively on her canvases. Her current works show her refraining from oil paint’s distinct properties, such as building depth and weight, and instead working in thin layers of color. Moreover, she completes her paintings by wiping paint away, making the color layers even thinner and sometimes revealing the white cloth of the canvas underneath. By allowing the viewer to see through the paint layers and access the fabric of the canvas, Shin recreates the translucent atmosphere of a watercolor painting — a transparent medium — while still showcasing the vivid hues characteristic of oil paint. Instead of feeling heavy and worked, the movements in her paintings are brisk and approachable, and this wiping-away technique is the secret.

But this choice brings a compositional challenge: the layers must remain thin and transparent, but the painting should also have spatial depth and not feel flat. To achieve this, Shin accumulates multitudes of layers that vary in color and levels of mark-making. She bestows depth even to a thinly-spread, single-colored paint layer by deliberately adjusting the paint’s concentration levels and goes on to create full storylines on her canvases by attuning or colliding different colors. Countless layers of paint build up on the radiant fabric of the canvas, and the colors retaining Shin’s brushwork waver and blossom. Areas painted in expansive, soft curves form a harmony with faster, more rigid-looking thin surfaces, as if lush flower petals were dancing in the wind. The sheer diversity of colors further bolsters the feeling of abundance. Suddenly, a painting unique to Shin appears, unprecedented and unmatched.

The Origin of Hannah Shin

Where have Shin’s blossoming colors come from? In analyzing creative works, the approach of considering the artist’s background, such as upbringing, has the risk of flattening discussions about the works themselves. Yet, in Shin’s case, discussing her works without the cultural contexts that surround her proves extremely challenging because her creations and her life are so apparently and intimately connected. For instance, after seeing Shin’s works, most remark that her works do not belong to the styles typically observed in Korea. After noting how uncommon her color palette and composition are, the viewers often go on to mention her overseas career. But fascinatingly, whenever Shin presented her works in the United Kingdom, the focal point was often their oriental properties. These contrasting observations may originate from Shin’s upbringing that naturally combines three different cultures: Shin was born in Korea but was raised in Jakarta, Indonesia, from the age of seven and studied in an international school throughout, and then attended university and graduate school in London, UK.

An upbringing like this can pose a stumbling block in an artist’s career. The level of impact may be different, but in any country’s art world, recommendations and introductions from acquaintances significantly influence an artist’s career trajectory. Artistic evaluation is, ultimately, a subjective decision, so the endorsement from a trustworthy acquaintance is always bound to be a noteworthy indicator. Shin is Korean by birth, but she spent her elementary school to graduate school years outside of Korea — the period most advantageous in building and acquiring such acquaintances — meaning that the Korean art world was entirely foreign territory to her. Korean by nationality, but the climate and culture of Indonesia would be more familiar to her, and having initiated her artistic career in the UK, she is a “foreign” artist in Korea. Although she received her artistic education in the UK and commenced her career there, it cannot be considered a homeland comfortable for her. Having no fixed roots, it may seem that Shin is more prone to turbulence than others.

But, by the same token, it is also true that Shin has constantly transcended boundaries and frameworks throughout her career, and as a result, she has successfully secured a “unique territory” that belongs to neither Korea, Indonesia, nor the UK. Considering how numerous artists find their creative limits aligned with the boundaries of the world they have encountered, this factor is undoubtedly advantageous. Shin obtained her clear and vivid color palette not from Korea or the UK but from frolicking among the tropical plants of Indonesia, and the vitality bursting forth from her canvases carries the heat of a tropical climate. On the other hand, Shin’s usage of negative space — created by the wiping-away technique — and her emphasis on calligraphic brushstrokes are surely influences of Korean culture passed onto her by her parents. Lastly, the technique of compiling these instincts into the form of paintings was learned in Europe, the birthplace of contemporary art. Of course, Shin digesting different cultural elements into a unique creative expression is entirely natural rather than forced because rather than merely brushing against different cultural spheres, she has lived a life in each of them. This is how Shin’s art, flexible rather than rigid and transcending frames and boundaries — what she calls a “lax art” — came into existence.

Oriental in a Personal Way

If one considers Shin’s works as “oriental” with an existing concept or idea of the oriental in mind, this is a preconception of sorts because Shin’s art has freely traversed boundaries all along. Her works may indeed contain Asian aestheticisms in a broader framework, but her tropical climate-based instinct is too dissimilar from the East Asian ink-wash tradition (born in a temperate climate) to be bound together as one, just as how her career traverses Seoul and Jakarta, Shin’s art also assumed its form at somewhere between East Asia and Southeast Asia. The individual works created in the course may be considered “oriental,” but an oriental that is entirely new to Shin, one that never existed before. This is why her works are fresh and, occasionally, exotic.

However, Shin had not built toward her current abstract painting style from the very beginning. Having begun her practice in representational painting, it was in the UK that she started working in her current aesthetic language. During her undergraduate program, a professor, after observing her paint, remarked that she seemed to be less interested in painting toward an image and rather seemed to find joy in playing and engaging with the brush. It was something Shin had never noted herself. Associating subject matters such as landscape or still-life are mere excuses, so enjoy the act of painting itself; this advice helped her transcend the frames of representation and figuration. Composing the canvas freely with large brushstrokes is another change that occurred during her undergraduate years. In a project where she had to finish a 4-meter-wide canvas in five days with limited working hours from 10 AM to 5 PM, she let go of the brushes she was familiar with and opted for larger brushes and filled the canvas using previously untried techniques, and this occasion allowed her to obtain the freedom she is showing today. In other words, albeit often identified as “oriental,” Shin’s art is, in fact, the product of a “Western” education.

Despite these circumstances, we still feel oriental beauty in Shin’s works because she has worked honestly throughout the years. An artist who is honest with oneself creates works from within one’s inner realm. External stimuli can add details that did not exist previously in an artist’s work and, at times, significantly influence the trajectory of one’s oeuvre, but a good artist still processes such outside stimuli through the filter that is oneself and creates new works; this is precisely how Shin’s works in her European era came to bear her intrinsic cultural identity despite her not intentionally sourcing oriental elements.

In this context, now that she has moved into a new studio in Paju, the future changes that will occur to her works are exciting prospects. Among various locations in Korea, Paju has a particularly long and deep winter, and the works created there will undoubtedly differ from her previous oeuvre that bore Jakarta’s heat. Paju also differs from her previous studio in Seoul in terms of its urban density. Shin’s latest, newly-emerging monochrome paintings are noteworthy as a new realm of her oeuvre caused by the change in her surroundings. Her palette has become limited, but she is now able to attempt new combinations of more audacious lines that were previously refrained from as they could muddy the composition. The new utilization of oil bars adds another solid shade of black, different from the oil paint’s black. The black strokes harmonizing with the empty areas created by the wiping-away technique naturally summon the aesthetics of traditional Korean painting that employs ink-wash and negative space of the paper. These new works undoubtedly extend from her previous works, but they feel dissimilar.

Ultimately, the various mediums and experimentations boil down to the aesthetics unique to Shin’s practice. If she successfully completes her new monochrome series, it will form an accentuated period in her career contrasting with her previous oeuvre of vibrant colors and enrich her practice by becoming a resource that she could summon by necessity — just as how she is continuing to play variations on her past works containing heavy energy that were prominent during 2017-2018. These works used an increased amount of paint and felt less transparent and lightweight, but the energy contained in them was rendered much sharper. Up to now, all of the above were mentioned as oriental aesthetics, but Shin’s unique aesthetics transcending frames and boundaries will continue to expand, and at last, the “oriental aesthetics unique to Shin’s way” will conclude as “aesthetics in the way of Shin.” A low fence cannot stop plants from growing over it, and likewise, may Shin’s boundary-traversing art continue to blossom splendidly in the future