The 2022 exhibition program at Mimesis Art Museum begins with a young artist who seriously explores the domain of painting.

At the age of 36, Woohyun Shim has held five solo exhibitions in the United States and Korea and has participated in numerous curated exhibitions. She was selected as a Chongkundang Yesuljisang artist in 2013, and through her doctoral dissertation, she has researched painterly painting, exploring the origins of her own practice and seeking its methodology.

Shim’s painting originates from her childhood experiences of frequently playing in forests. The primitive and wild atmosphere of the forest, along with the subtle fear and sense of mystery she felt within it, are expressed on the canvas through dancing brushstrokes and a dizzying feast of vivid primary colors. Within the chaos of layered images, one can sense a desire to escape the boundaries of time and space; a secretive impulse to uncover concealed worlds of death and fear; and an energy governed by a sensorially charged nature revealed through the dreamlike world realized by dynamic drawing.

This solo exhibition aims to provide an opportunity to closely examine and publicly present the serious artistic world of a selected young artist, allowing her to evaluate the position of her work and explore its future direction.
 

Exhibition Preface

Forest, a Space of Painterly Sensuality

Amid deep blue waves drawn by frustration and melancholy, art becomes both a space of play and a refuge of healing. Oil paint on canvas, traces of the act of painting, illusory spatiality and accidental forms created by countless brushstrokes, and the narratives and allegories discovered within them—all of these elements intertwine, turning painting into a site of events where the painter’s desires and anxieties erupt.

In moments of immersion and intensity, as the painter discovers a complete world of her own, she continually questions the essence of painting. While these questions have constantly transformed the forms of painting, the lineage of painterly painting—emphasizing color, gesture, and tactility—continues to persist. In a time when anxiety about reality and hope for the future coexist, the emotion, thrill, and sublimity offered by art are energies drawn from the depths, riding rough waves. For this reason, even now, we continue to long for painterly painting.

The forest depicted by Woohyun Shim is a philosophical space that serves as a source of narrative and inspiration, expressing the homogeneity of life and death. Her canvas is both a physical site where countless brushstrokes and traces of paint are recorded, and a space onto which images existing beyond the artist’s conscious awareness are unconsciously projected. It is also a forest symbolizing the abyss.

Within the chaos of layered images, a desire to escape the boundaries of time and space; a secretive impulse to uncover hidden worlds of death and fear; dynamic brushstrokes that primitively convey a mythic sensuality—Shim’s forest, filled with all of these sensations, is a place where the rhythm of the abyss dances. Shim’s world, in which she studies painterliness and seeks her own artistic method, draws us in here and now, at a time when we yearn to reclaim an energy filled with the self and to feel its vitality once again.

References

• 《심연의 리듬 (The Rhythm of the Abyss)》