Solo Exhibitions (Brief)

Shim has held solo exhibitions including 《How the Heart is Made》 (Humor Garm Got, Seoul, 2023), 《The Rhythm of the Abyss》 (Mimesis Art Museum, Paju, 2022), and 《Enchanting Forest》 (Leeahn Gallery, Seoul, 2018).

Group Exhibitions (Brief)

Shim has also participated in numerous group exhibitions, including 《Your Marvelous World, and Art》 (SH Gallery, Seoul, 2024–2025), 《Scope and Scape》 (Mimesis Art Museum, Paju, 2023), 《My Sleep》 (Culture Station Seoul 284, Seoul, 2022), 《Time of Painting》 (Sejong Museum of Art, Seoul, 2019), 《LAND.IN.SIGHT》 (Space K, Gwacheon, 2016), and 《Painting, In-between The Real and The Surreal》 (Insa Art Center, Seoul, 2015).

Awards (Selected)

In 2013, Shim was selected as one of the three emerging artists for the Chongkundang Yesuljisang.

Collections (Selected)

Woohyun Shim’s works are held in the collections of the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Art Bank, Gwacheon; Space K, Gwacheon; Jonggeundang, Seoul; and the Connor Meig Award Foundation, Omaha.

Originality & Identity

Woohyun Shim’s practice begins with everyday places—particularly forests—but does not remain within the bounds of simple natural representation or landscape painting. For the artist, the forest functions both as an external world and as a condition that activates the inner self. Memories of wandering and immersion experienced during childhood in the ancestral forest in Paju became a sensory archetype that has been continuously recalled throughout her painting practice. These experiences already appear in early works such as lava, ketchup(2009) and Bubbles, Eggs, Lines(2009), where images of nature merge with layers of memory, imagination, and sensation.

Over time, the forest shifts from a concrete site to a field in which perception and emotion intersect. Experiences in the forest operate not merely as visual scenery but as events accompanied by bodily sensation and psychological states, which are reorganized within the canvas into de-spatialized and de-temporalized structures. In works such as Flip(2010) and New Worship(2010), boundaries between past and present, human and non-human, are blurred as multiple forms of existence are juxtaposed within a single pictorial space.

The 2014 solo exhibition 《Eros-scape》(Art Space Hue, 2014) marks a turning point in which Shim situates her painting within a more explicit conceptual framework through the notion of “Eros.” Here, Eros is understood not in a narrowly erotic sense, but as a primordial energy that repeatedly generates impulses, relations, and their dissolution. In works such as Puff the Magic Bomb(2014) and Naughty Forest of Diana(2014), images emerge through chance collisions and layers, only to be erased again, revealing a continual cycle of formation and collapse within the painting itself.

Subsequently, Shim’s painting gradually shifts from the forest as a conduit for receiving external scenery toward a structure in which the inner self becomes the point of departure. This corresponds to the artist’s notion of a paradoxical “outside (le dehors),” in which images triggered from within are projected outward as if they belonged to the external world. This perspective continues in works such as Blind Love(2018), Fiction #5(2018), and Can’t Stop the Music(2021), where the forest expands into a deep, psychological space in which sensation, memory, and impulse intersect beyond any specific location.

Style & Contents

While grounded in the traditional medium of oil painting, Woohyun Shim’s work foregrounds the materiality of paint and the gesture of the brush. Short, fragmented strokes, flowing traces of paint, and repeated processes of layering and erasure transform the canvas from a fixed image into a field in which time and action accumulate. This approach is consistently maintained from early works such as lava, ketchup to later paintings including Puff the Magic Bomb.

The motifs that populate her canvases—plants, flowers, branches, animal body parts, eggs, and eyes found in forest environments—are presented not through realistic depiction but through transformation and recombination. Distinctions between human and animal, organism and organ, are dissolved as different species and temporalities coexist within a single image. This hybrid imagery is particularly evident in works such as Lotus Landscape 1(2013), Lotus Landscape 2(2013), and Succumbed to Reason(2013).

Compositional strategies further contribute to this complexity. Shim frequently overlays multiple viewpoints, combining bird’s-eye perspectives with intimate, close-up gazes. Rather than unfolding as a unified narrative, her images are compressed into condensed scenes in which disparate times and events are placed side by side, producing a distinctly surreal sensibility.

Around the time of 《Enchanting Forest》(Leeahn Gallery, 2018), a noticeable shift occurs in color and density. Whereas earlier works were filled with thick layers of paint and intense primary colors, later works adopt lighter, more transparent palettes that emphasize spatial pauses and rhythm. Through this shift, painting expands into a flexible “non-place” that reflects the viewer’s sensory and emotional engagement.

Topography & Continuity

Woohyun Shim’s work aligns with broader contemporary tendencies that combine nature, interiority, sensation, and myth, yet it establishes a distinct position by refusing to fix images within a single narrative or symbolic system. Rather than treating nature as a conceptual metaphor or a scenic object, she approaches it as a condition through which sensation arises and inner processes are activated, distinguishing her work from conventional landscape painting or expressive naturalism.

Compared to other contemporary artists working with similar media, Shim’s painting remains deliberately open-ended. Instead of guiding interpretation toward a singular meaning, her use of hybrid imagery and non-linear structures sustains a state of indeterminacy. This openness persists despite the recurring motif of the forest, allowing each body of work and exhibition to develop its own sensory density and internal logic. In exhibitions such as 《LAND.IN.SIGHT》(Space K, Gwacheon, 2016) and 《The Rhythm of the Abyss》(Mimesis Art Museum, Paju, 2022), these differences extend beyond individual works to shape the rhythm of the exhibition space as a whole.

Shim’s practice has evolved from an initial, sensory response to external landscapes toward an inquiry into the mechanisms of inner perception and cognition. Nevertheless, several core elements remain consistent: the forest as an experiential archetype, a sustained engagement with brushwork and materiality, and a cyclical structure of generation and dissolution. These constants allow her work to continuously transform without becoming fixed in a single formal or conceptual mode.

Grounded in her ongoing navigation between place and interiority, sensation and concept, Shim’s painting continues to expand toward an extended pictorial field that encompasses exhibition space and the viewer’s embodied experience. As long as the forest operates not as a specific site but as a sensory and psychological terrain, her work is likely to keep unfolding and mutating within broader contexts beyond the local scene.