Kim Se Joong Estate  

Shin Sung Hy (1948-2009) majored in painting at Hongik University before leaving for Paris in 1980. Shin’s steadfast inquiry into the nature of painting is evident in his enduring experimentations with painting’s two-dimensionality and materiality. He grappled with issues such as the flatness of the canvas, the physicality of pigments, and the limitation of the canvas frame, culminating in the invention of his nouage method of weaving and knotting painted strips of canvas. His earlier works of the mid-1970s and early 1980s used jute as the surface material of the canvas and depicted the back of the canvas in a hyper-realistic manner. These depictions of the jute itself augmented the viewer’s perception of the weave in the painting’s actual support and display the artist’s unique interpretation of the format that is painting. Eventually, his explorations resulted in the nouage technique for which he is most known. In these works, the artist coarsely painting both sides of the canvas and would rip the material into thin strips thus denying and dismantling the painted surface.  

Selected Works

Exhibitions 

Kim Se Joong Estate

Shin Sung Hy (1948-2009) majored in painting at Hongik University before leaving for Paris in 1980. Shin’s steadfast inquiry into the nature of painting is evident in his enduring experimentations with painting’s two-dimensionality and materiality. He grappled with issues such as the flatness of the canvas, the physicality of pigments, and the limitation of the canvas frame, culminating in the invention of his nouage method of weaving and knotting painted strips of canvas. His earlier works of the mid-1970s and early 1980s used jute as the surface material of the canvas and depicted the back of the canvas in a hyper-realistic manner. These depictions of the jute itself augmented the viewer’s perception of the weave in the painting’s actual support and display the artist’s unique interpretation of the format that is painting. Eventually, his explorations resulted in the nouage technique for which he is most known. In these works, the artist coarsely painting both sides of the canvas and would rip the material into thin strips thus denying and dismantling the painted surface.

Selected Works

Exhibitions