Based on the artist’s notes and dissertation, the key terms for explaining the painting of Woohyun Shim (b. 1987) can be summarized as eros (sexual love), romantic (Romanticism), painterliness, painting, and gesture. At the foundation of her work lies a thorough and expansive reflection of Romanticism, which emphasizes an intensely subjective worldview, and at the core of this worldview is the presupposition of eros as a fluid state of energy. Not only for Shim, but increasingly for contemporary art as a whole, the correlation between art and Romanticism continues to grow.

Research and writings applying various media theories to digital storytelling, digital poetry, and media art are reestablishing a new media sensibility among creators—rediscovering Romanticism as the most progressive and postmodern driving force, characterized by vivid expression, delicate emotional transmission, free imagination, and originality.

This text analyzes the formal structures and materials of her works that faithfully align with her core concepts—myths and totems shaping conscious worlds, the handling of shamanistic imagery, use of color, stroke, and composition. It further examines how her ongoing appropriation and symbolic transformation of landscape painting construct a psychological imaginary grounded in reality—not through imitation of natural elements or objects, but through reference. Ultimately, from the perspective of contemporary media culture, this essay seeks to clarify the significance of these attempts to mechanically reanimate Romantic concepts that have long been considered obsolete or clichéd.

Shim has articulated her conceptual stance on eros and Romanticism in her artist’s notes as follows:

“My work centers on eros, the origin of the birth of all things. Raw erosic energy lies latent in primitive nature, and this organic eros begins from dialectical thought, transforming biological impulse into cultural impulse, and into other phases.”

The power of eros here is ambivalent. In Greek mythology, Eros—the god of love born of Ares, god of war, and Aphrodite, goddess of beauty—governs opposing forces of attraction and repulsion. His playful acts of vengeance, capable of inflaming desire like fire with golden arrows or provoking hatred with lead arrows, culminated tragically in the one-sided love between Daphne and the arrogant Apollo. For Freud, eros denotes the life instincts of sexuality and self-preservation.

In Plato’s ‘Symposium’, voiced through Socrates, eros is described as the will to overcome incompleteness—the desire to pursue truth in order to become whole. Georges Bataille (1897–1962), in ‘Erotism’ (1957), interprets eros in relation to death as the existential limit of humanity, tracing the cultural roots of sexual taboo violations. Ultimately, eros refers to all acts of resistance against imposed taboos—transgressions that exceed social conventions.

Viewing eros through this lens, Shim focuses on its simple dialectical function that moves toward production and creation as a means of overcoming the death and desolation already foreseen for us. She proposes eros as a positive force—a dense principle encompassing attraction, world formation, chance encounters, and the fundamental placement and arrangement of things. This evokes a Romanticized concept combining Newton’s law of universal gravitation with the hypothetical ether that fills even the vacuum of space to transmit light and energy.

Thus, eros suppresses fear of the unknown and resistance toward realms beyond our understanding—shadows untouched by Promethean light—propelling the artist forward. This magical force capable of transforming the world originates from eros, translated as love drawn from the ontological flesh and blood of existence. Yet the violent cruelty often accompanying revolutionary change is replaced or deliberately excluded through metaphorical symbolism.

Plato argued that expression arises from imagination rather than reason. Romantic artists of the late 18th century believed art belonged to imagination, manifested through subjective freedom. Walter Benjamin observed that the Romantic spirit takes satisfaction in its own fantasies. Conversely, Enlightenment rationalism regarded Romantic expression as a deviation—reactionary rather than progressive. Shim’s unwavering principle of painting originating from herself is distinctly Romantic. As she articulated in her dissertation, she recognizes the limits of the subject–object dichotomy and asserts absolute subjectivity at the center of the world.

Romanticism emphasizes mystical communion between artist and nature, individualism, passion, sensitivity, imagination, and often favors the eerie and exotic. While earlier Romantic artists distanced themselves from rational persuasion and mechanized culture, they nonetheless retained classical representation. Shim, however, more overtly addresses the supernatural and fear, allowing submerged events, memories, images, and symbols to surge dynamically across the canvas through stains, associations, and partial revelations. Like mythic dramas of gods and humans unfolding beneath Mount Olympus, the colliding image elements on her canvases erupt through chance encounters, radiating powerful erosic energy.

In her paintings, mythic elements intermingle with transformed disasters, beasts, and foreign motifs, repeatedly disrupting erosic relations through layering and erasure. Hierarchies collapse; suppressed animality emerges. Even when tinged with Thanatos, the artist’s fear manifests through instinctual tension. This new metaphor destabilizes rational order and becomes a powerful tool of subversion.

Bolter and Grusin’s ‘Remediation’ (1996) proposed the principle of immediacy to trace media history. Since Alberti’s invention of perspective, painting became a transparent window converging toward a vanishing point. Artists sought realism by erasing traces of mediation. Shim’s method of covering, however, eliminates transparency and intensifies painterliness. The brush becomes an extension of the body; painting engages the entire body, generating organic energy spirals across the canvas. As Johann Gottfried Herder suggested, the painting projects a newly created ecological organism.

Recent works frequently feature pinks close to red and blues approaching purple. Goethe’s ‘Theory of Colour’s (1810) explains how polarized colors create a complete chromatic circle. While brushstrokes evoke nature, spatial depth emerges through relational distances of color points, unifying the image organically. The shifting viewpoints resemble third-person RPG perspectives, compressing cinematic narratives into a single frame. Speed collapses Euclidean space; relationships continuously reconfigure.

In ‘The Aesthetics of Disappearance’ (1991), Paul Virilio uses “picnolepsy” to describe disruptions in technological society. These discontinuities parallel Shim’s carefully staged painterly experiences. Unlike panoramic recall, Shim overlays present spaces onto memory, miniaturizing and dissolving them. From a media-aesthetic perspective, Romanticism emerges as a meticulously staged expression of emotion.


– Choi Heung-chul (Curator, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art)

References

• 《에로스 정경 Eros-scape》