Does the Garden of Eden really exist? : Jin-Yeop Kim > Review

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1.

 The Garden of Eden, in the Bible, is a typical model of Paradise full of ‘happiness, blessing, and joy’. Adam and Eve committed blasphemy and were expelled from the Garden of Blessings. Since then, humans have been forced to work hard to earn a living, while greed and blind obsession resulted in wars and slaughter, leading to the human world overflow with suffering.

 Since modern times, humans have dreamt of a new Garden of Eden through science and reason, but in modern society, more formidable wars, hunger and fear, and above all else, other punishments such as living as an alienated human being engulfed them.

 Young-churl Shim’s ‘… Garden’ is a project that dreams of a new Garden of Eden. The world born here refers an eternal world that dreams of new salvation through art, not imagination, notion, or escape. Above all, what Young-churl Shim pays attention to is the constant desire of humans. She tries to form a new network of relationships in life by neutralizing and harmonizing human desires, which cannot be achieved forever, into her garden. Ultimately, the purpose of this work is to harmonize different social forms such as religion, art, and science, and to create a variety of communication structures by creating a new language, This is the ultimate purpose of the ‘…Garden’.

 After starting with traditional sculpture, Young-churl Shim built a foundation for her work by combining various media and traditional materials, centering on installation art, while experiencing technology during her education in the United States. In a temporal sense, Young-churl Shim's process of her work can be seen as a change from a single linear time to a spiral time, and from a limited and closed space to a multi-layered open space from a spatial perspective. In particular, what is meaningful in Korean art history is that the new genres that appeared in Korean contemporary art from the late 20th century to the early 21st century are contained in all, or part of Young-churl Shim's work.

 In general, an artist's journey of work is often the case in which a concept established from the beginning of the work is steadily established, or a completely new work emerges through rapid transformation in the middle of the work. However, Young-churl Shim's case is a bit unusual. There is a consistent flow of work, and it has been partially changed, with that partial change bringing about change as a whole over time. In other words, new works continue to appear in stages, but old works continue to coexist. This creates another new realm. Like the dialectical process of ‘thesis-antithesis-synthesis’, a continuous cycle continues to appear in Shim’s work journey.

2.

 Art critic Young-ho Kim divides Young-churl Shim's work from the early years to the 2010s into roughly six stages. It is divided by the expressive methods exemplified in the works of sculpture and installation art in ‘comb formation-message-electronic garden-monumental garden, fantasy space-performance & video’.

 In the early stages of his work, ‘Comb Formation’ was a period in which she raised an intimate awareness of femininity through a series of wood and stone carvings using traditional Korean combs. Afterwards, Young-churl Shim drew attention to a new medium of expression through his fascination with technology during five years of studying in the United States. She attempted to discover a new formative language by connecting existing natural materials and media-oriented engineering techniques.

 Upon returning to Korea, she continued to present these convergence and complex results. A representative example is the series ‘Electronic Garden’ from the 1990s. By combining natural materials such as water, fire, and earth with cutting-edge science and technology such as 3D images, holograms, touch screens, and electronics and electricity, we break down the boundaries between art and non-arts, everyday life and art through technology, focusing on 'message', where she made her own voice the center of the work. The ‘Electronic Garden’ series exhibited at the 1993 Daejeon Expo, which received a great response as Korea’s first interactive art, introduced cutting-edge techniques such as holograms and presented the Garden of Eden in the heart, a new paradise combining science and art.

 'Electronic Garden', mainly centered on 'Electronic Flower', is an experimental work that expresses both dreamy and religious seriousness at the same time. In particular, the large bellflower flower, made by melting molten iron, creates an erotic atmosphere by harmonizing the pistil and stamens through a long stem made by casting, creating an atmosphere of daily life, art, and the sacred. It shows the work of breaking down boundaries. Here, flowers are a world of boundaries where utopia and reality intersect, and like the yin and yang in the oriental meaning, a new life is born through change. There are no divisions or prohibitions here. If the myth of Eden was maintained through 'forbidden', the 'world of flowers' is a place where free human actions take place, and a space where conscious and unconscious coexist and everything can be reconciled through 'love'.

 This electronic garden is not only an opportunity to change the frame of perception as an artist, but also an acquisition of the positivity of life as an independent existence in the closed frame of our society as both an artist and a human being. Above all, the fact that she established herself as a being with the potential to advance into the future, has a significant implication.

 Through the own world built in ‘Electronic Garden’, Shim’s work delicately expands her unique formative language. As a result of this, the 'monumental garden' and 'secret garden' series of the 2000s are consecutively created. 

 ‘Monumental Garden’, which is made of colorful glass and other materials, focuses on the form of outdoor sculpture, focusing on a more fundamental meaning than ‘electronic garden’, and is a series dealing with the heavy theme of creation and extinction. 'Secret Garden' explores one's inner self, and rather than the splendor of his previous works, she used restrained colors of gemstones such as amethyst and jade. In particular, it strongly suggests the positivity of oneself through the raw stones, which seem to break easily but are strong materials. 

 If the works before the 2010s materialized the exploration of the relative aspects of time and space through the denial of the concept of absolute time and space, the works after the 2010s applied the concept of quantum mechanics that space-time has dynamics just like matter does. Such result is a 'matrix garden' using stainless steel beads, etc. Young-churl Shim says that he chose 'Matrix Garden' as the theme to enter a more profound dimension.

 “I want to show the matrix structure of virtual, reality, and the universe through the images of you and me projected on hundreds of marbles, and ourselves reflected on the ceiling and the floor, reproduced indefinitely.”

 The works of ‘Matrix Garden’ show that her world of work has entered a completely new era. In the new garden, the artist unleashes the capabilities accumulated in her long media art work with profound and grand themes such as humans, life, and the universe. In this way, she reveals a broader and deeper formative consciousness.

 In 'Matrix Garden', beads made of stainless steel are used as the basic unit. The circular marble here is an abbreviation of various types of prototypes such as the hemisphere used in the previous 'Electron Garden' series, and it symbolizes the source of life. Although it is a small marble, everything in the world is condensed in it, because it embraces all the scenery in front of your eyes. Also, the mushroom shapes are a phallic symbol, with the oyster mushroom shapes symbolizing women. The Matrix Garden is like a womb where life is born. It is a primordial situation before civilization and environment, where time and space act like matter. Humans and society are no longer at issue here.

 The ‘matrix’ refers to a world that proliferates indefinitely as if the door in front of you is opened, and another door is endlessly connected inside. The matrix concept, which freely crosses the vertical and horizontal axes, transcends the distance between the artist, the work, and the viewer. The world of the Matrix is a space where ‘you and I’ coexist, and where human words no longer have meaning, and a place where humans sympathize with, and move away from each other. Therefore, this is a space that floats freely, where the results are unpredictable, and the meaning of 'Eden' pursued by Young-churl Shim is in full bloom.

3.

 The first exhibition ‘Dancing Garden’, held at the Jeju Museum of Modern Art in 2014, is an exhibition of Young-churl Shim’s previous works, and major works ranging from ‘Electronic Garden’ to ‘Matrix Garden’ were exhibited. The title ‘Dancing Garden’ meant not only to look at the performance that was made along with the exhibition from the beginning of the work, but also to inform that the genre of performance was a part of the ‘Garden’ series pursued by Young-churl Shim.

Like a bird floating in a free garden, like a butterfly, like a leaf, a free spirit floating in the present, past, and future is contained in the ‘Dancing Garden’. Young-churl Shim prepares for a new gesture in the 2020s. The new sound is not just about singing about tomorrow. The ‘past-present-future’ is no longer important. Every day is Eden for us. Not in linear time or space, but in an open space and floating time, his echoes spread forever.

Jin-Yeop Kim (Art Critic)