Nau mai, haere mai, welcome to EyeContact. You are invited to respond to reviews and contribute to discussion by registering to participate.

JH

Shin Works on Canvas and Paper

AA
View Discussion
Installation of Jeena Shin's Movement Image Time exhibition at Two Rooms. Photo: Sam Hartnett Installation of Jeena Shin's Movement Image Time exhibition at Two Rooms. Photo: Sam Hartnett Jeena Shin, Movement Image Time 1, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 1700 x 1200 mm. Photo: Sam Hartnett Jeena Shin, Movement Image Time 1, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 1700 x 1200 mm. Photo: Sam Hartnett Jeena Shin, Movement Image Time 11, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 1700 x 1200 mm. Photo: Sam Hartnett Jeena Shin, Movement Image Time 11, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 1700 x 1200 mm. Photo: Sam Hartnett Jeena Shin, Movement Image Time IV, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 1700 x 1200 mm. Photo: Sam Hartnett Jeena Shin, Movement Image Time IV, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 1700 x 1200 mm. Photo: Sam Hartnett Jeena Shin, Movement Image Time IV, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 1700 x 1200 mm. Photo: Sam Hartnett Jeena Shin, Movement Image Time 111, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 1700 x 1200 mm. Photo: Sam Hartnett Jeena Shin, Movement Image Time 111, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 1700 x 1200 mm. Photo: Sam Hartnett Jeena Shin, Movement Image Time 111, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 1700 x 1200 mm. Photo: Sam Hartnett Jeena Shin, Movement Image Time 1-70, 2017, archival pigment on Hahnemuhle paper, 3550 x 1700 mm. Photo: Sam Hartnett Jeena Shin, Movement Image Time 1-70, 2017, archival pigment on Hahnemuhle paper, 3550 x 1700 mm. Photo: Sam Hartnett Jeena Shin, Movement Image Time 1-70, 2017, detail, archival pigment on Hahnemuhle paper, 3550 x 1700 mm. Photo: Sam Hartnett

Each work has a lovely improvised quality as if the result of a unique chain of decision-making processes. The restraint—with so few white components—makes you examine the compositional format, the asymmetrical organisation of the geometric elements: how they are positioned, and Shin's interest in light.

Auckland

 

Jeena Shin
Movement Image Time

 

27 October - 25 November

Four canvas paintings and seventy smaller compositions on paper, printed by Kevin Burns and displayed in a grid on the large end wall, make up this Jeena Shin show. The works are less holistic than her Motus series of three years ago, ie. less complicated and less dominated by an over-all pattern. The angular, tangram-style shapes remain, but fewer in terms of the surface of the picture-plane and somewhat deeper in their sense of illusionistic depth, implying foreshortened geometric forms. They even suggest looking up at a skyline of surrounding buildings, especially churches with steeples.

In terms of tones Shin uses black, white and a grey that is charcoal-like and darkish, rather than midtone. Back and grey dominate absolutely, and in the paintings the edges of the masked off forms containing built up layers are done so fastidiously that they look like tiny walls, not juxtaposed shapes.

The overlapping angular black and grey forms leave spiky gaps, angular negative shapes in white that sometimes result in teeny-weeny splinterlike slivers or minute triangles. Each work has a lovely improvised quality as if the result of a unique chain of decision-making processes. The restraint—with so few white components—makes you examine the compositional format, the asymmetrical organisation of the geometric elements: how they are positioned, and Shin’s interest in light.

Looking at the end wall, the seventy works on paper seem positioned in the grid according to chance, and it is hard to determine any sequential logic or chronological movement. Maybe if they didn’t have white framing borders, they could merge into one big ‘black’ rectangular image in a flurry of fluttering shards. As individual compositions they might have been better as a separate show upstairs, the compositions generously spread out far apart so each vertical paper rectangle can be studied one at a time.

Though called digital photograms, that description is misleading because photograms suggest darkroom technology without a camera-using some light-excluding stencilling process. They certainly are beautiful images on paper though, a lovely parallel to the canvases, pristine and flickering—as the acute and obtuse angles jab and nudge away at the picture planes and edges of the small vertical rectangles—all aligned in a floating paper grid. A nice contrast to the much taller and thicker canvas works that revel in their comparative isolation.

John Hurrell

Print | Facebook | Twitter | Email

 

Recent Posts by John Hurrell

JH
Jae Hoon Lee, Mother and Child, 2024, inkjet on smooth pearl. 1500 x 1500 mm

Looking Through (or At) Jae Hoon Lee

IVAN ANTHONY GALLERY

Auckland

 

Jae Hoon Lee
Internal Landscape Part II


16 March 2024 -13 April 2024

JH
Outside installation of part of Shiraz Sadikeen's The Natural Rate, at Treadler. Photo: Alex North.

Sadikeen @ Treadler

TREADLER

Auckland


Shiraz Sadikeen
The Natural Rate


8 March 2024 - 23 March 2024

 

JH
Still from Marcus Coates, The Directors: Lucy (2022) Single channel HD video on loop, projection, 21 min, 24 sec--⁠presented at Yellow Brick Road, courtesy of Artangel.

Attempting to Describe the Experience of Psychosis

Te Tuhi /Auckland Arts Festival

5 inner city sites


Marcus Coates
The Directors


24 February - 24 March 2024

JH
Ava Seymour, Manhole, 2023, Maribu solvent screen-printing ink on aluminium, 1120 x 910 mm, unique.

Maternal Appurtenances

COASTAL SIGNS

Auckland

 

Ava Seymour
Heels of Mothers


14 March - 13 April 2024