Bongchull Shin

„A Breath of Light“

The Martina Kaiser Gallery is pleased to announce a stunning debut: With the exhibition “A Breath of Light” Korean artist Bongchull Shin will present selected works for the first time in our white cube.

The unleashing of color and light by means of a rhythmic glass-installation: The art work of Bongchull Shin is based on the interaction of material, matter and mobility showcasing complexity and depth while on the same hand being fluid and airy.

Fundamentally his art work derives from the glass painting genre, but due to its conceptual composing and the final reception it comes up to light art with all its changeable and transient effects. With the daylight changing and the observer moving his reflectional creations change their character constantly and assemble to always new effect-structures build from light, shade and empty space. Yet leading their aura to infinity.

Bongchull Shins carefully composed glass cubes and cylinders do function less than self-sufficient or complete art works, instead they serve as catalysts for carving out the deeper concept of sublime color and light art. Illumination, the material revelation of color and light, their tangible, 3-dimensional development and extension into the room – that’s what defines his art work leaving the sheer object behind.

Being raised on a flower farm near Suwon/South Korea Bongchull Shin experienced nature and cycles of all forms of life very early. What flashed him most was the play of light throughout days, months and seasons as well as the color change of flowers, plants and landscapes. This fascination led him to the decision to become an artist. For him glass, although being hardly relevant in Asian art, seemed to be the perfect media to translate his artistic vision into material. That why he chose to move to Germany in order to learn the glass painting technique.

Today the Korean artist has enriched this discipline with his own style of object art, yet shifting glass panes to cubes, cuboids and elongated stripes. The intense colors of his glass objects, ranging from pastels to full tones, come from fluid pigments which he adds to the composite. Being then polished they reveal maximum radiance when lit up by both daylight and punctual spot lights. And truly evoke what Franz Marc and Heinrich Campendonk defined as “Tiefenlicht”.

No wonder Shin names these grands, also being renowned glass artists, as an inspiration. Not to forget Ernst Ludwig Kirchner whose themes and color language Shin often recites.

Formally Bongchull Shins work is matching Minimal Art; with the reduction to the essentials and the focus on color and spatial effects he matches artists like Donald Judd and Dan Flavin who established light as an independent art material. Creating an alternative sphere and bearing a concept of an interactive, physically inspired art Bongchull Shin also stands close to Ólafur Elíasson, Jeppe Hein and Lee Bul with whom he has taken part in a group exhibition in 2019.

Bongshull Shin (*1981 in Suwon/South Korea) lives and works in Munich/Germany. After finishing his studies at Korean National University of Arts in Seoul, he came to the Academy of Fine Arts Munich in 2011 being a student of Prof. Prangenberg and Prof. Karstieß. He got his diploma there in 2017.

His works can be found in various private collections all over the world, moreover in museums and public collections such as Munich Airport, the Alexander Tutsek Foundation and the Glasmuseum Alter Hof Herding in Coesfeld/Germany.