Monumental Garden - Hangaram Art Museum, Seoul Arts Center > Art Work

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In search of Messiah in the Electronic Age 

 It is not easy to define in a word the artistic realm of Young-churl Shim who started out her career in traditional sculpture, but then expanded the boundaries to include new media and technology. During the last 25'years of her career, which began with the "Phased Representation of Comb" that used wood and stone to represent different shapes of the comb, Shim's techniques and mediums covered a wide spectrum from installation art using neon and hologram to video image and performances.

 Despite the diversity of mediums, expressive methods, and installation locales observed in the works of Shim, the thread that runs through her artistic tapestry is religion. It's worth nothing that the world of religious sanctity displayed in Shim's works as an artistic topic is portrayed through the means of scientific technology, such as neon, optic fibers, hologram, and video. Religion in the era of science paradoxically provides new values to modern society.

 It is clear that Shim's art functions as the garden of the messiah, balancing out two conflicting extreames, just like Louise Bourgeois and other celebrated figures of modern art, who could only have sustained their lives by producing artworks with a multitude of styles. Therefore, Shim's works can be called the Garden of Eden in an Electronic Age, and suggest that you heard the messages of human ecstasy and pain, and sublimity and desires blossoming in that garden.

Young-ho Kim (Art historian. art critic)