English — JAEDON SHIN

The moon hung suspended from lifeless tree branches, its glow resembling flames devouring the night. Below, a dog barked with a furious intensity, as if possessed by madness. People were strewn about, either collapsed or piled upon one another, in a bizarre scene that defied reason.

Amidst this peculiar chaos, the dog stood atop the human heap, its gaze fixed upon the moon. A curious partnership unfolded before their eyes. The moon, typically a symbol of serenity and illumination, had transformed into an enigmatic conductor of discord, echoing the dog's relentless cries with its own haunting lament.

As the peculiar duet between the dog and the moon continued, the surrounding people grappled with the overwhelming noise. They covered their ears, contorted their bodies, and writhed in discomfort.

Yet, within this surreal spectacle, I aim to illustrate beautiful chaos and ambiguity between reality and dreams, reality and imagination, causing a delightful confusion.

Jaedon Shin 2023

JAEDON SHIN; TWO EXHIBITIONS/ONE ARTIST

With the opening of the solo exhibition ‘Jaedon Shin: Double Moon’ at Heide Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in 2022, being one of Australia’s most important contemporary art museums and the birth place of Australian Modernism, the extent to which Jaedon Shin’s art provides insight into social issues in South Korea became vividly apparent. As a veteran of Korea’s June Democratic Struggle in the 1980s and 90s, which ultimately caused the ruling military Junta to reinstate direct presidential elections and the restoration of civil liberties, Jaedon Shin, who was born in 1959 in Gwangju, is well-placed to reflect on the particular social tensions that have emerged in the context of the Korean Peninsula.

With the nominally Communist yet hereditary dictatorship of North Korea abutting the presidential constitutional republic of South Korea, it is possible to perceive how political tensions in Korea can at times reach boiling point. Such is the state of affairs -at times edgy, sometimes oppressive, momentarily celebratory, often entangled and obscure – that ripple through the brightly coloured figurative paintings created by Jaedon since moving to Australia.

The exhibition title ‘Double Moon’ finds its origins in the twin moon motif that appears in many of Jaedon’s paintings. The allusion to simultaneous and contrasting realities plays to the idea of the two Koreas. Yet it also evokes the possibility of self and other and the recognition that one may not always be on the same page as one’s neighbour.

To mark the occasion of the Heide MOMA exhibition, the Australasian Cultural Arts Exchange (ACAE Gallery) has selected important paintings and works on paper from Jaedon’s studio to present the exhibition ‘Jaedon Shin: All Together Now’. The two exhibitions present a unique opportunity for Melbourne audiences to explore the visual language of Jaedon’s dream-like reflections. These are paintings that raise questions about human society and the tensions between individual and collective well-being.

From a stylistic perspective Jaedon acknowledges a debt to the Minjung Art Movement or People’s Art Movement, which emerged in 1980 after the Gwangju Massacre. For instance, the boldly delineated figures produced by master printmaker O Yoon (1946-1986) is a case in point, with Jaedon’s works being similarly defined by bold outlines applied to figures and landscapes alike. Minjung was a radical development that marked a turning point in Korean contemporary art. In sharp contrast to the minimalist abstraction of the Dansaekhwa artists of the 1970s, the Minjung artists drew inspiration from vernacular Korean folk art of the Joseon era (1392-1910). This was a style known as Minwha or ‘painting of the people’. The artists of communication, which they likewise deployed in the production of their socio-political artworks.

Yet where the Minjung artists aimed to ground their messages in a native Korean tradition, Jaedon Shin has sought a different direction. Jaedon has made use of his shift to Australia to reflect on life beyond an exclusively national context. From his Melbourne studio, he has sought to examine the underlying patterns of human behaviour, with his paintings assuming something of a classical or tragedian mode. The distinction is noteworthy not only as a contemplative exercise but also in regard to the manner in which Jaedon has forged a path of his own. Given the developmental arc of the Minjung Movement, from what began as a radical situation to one embraced by the mainstream, and somewhat stripped therefore of its political edge. Jaedon’s project can be seen as the work of one who seeks to illuminate human psychology through oscillating between engagement and critical distance.

That distance has in part been achieved through moving to Melbourne, and, in the context of Australian figurative painting, Jaedon has been surprised to recognize elements of his own artistic interests. Modernists painters such as Albert Tucker (1914-1999) and Yosl Bergner (1920-2017), the latter having similarly emigrated to Australia before settling in Israel and more recent figurative painters such as Peter Booth (B. 1940- ) have been important touchstones for Jaedon. Indeed, the accompanying presentation in 2022 of Albert Tucker’s paintings along with works by Italian Surrealist Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978) at Heide MOMA in the Albert & Barbara Tucker Gallery adjacent to Jaedon’s exhibition is redolent of these synergies and comparisons. According to Jaedon:

My transcultural experiences have been crucial in my practice. During the last decade, I split my time and practice into two countries, Australia and South Korea. However, interestingly, meaningful shifts in my practice always happen in Australia.

Within the museum setting the large-scale landscape diptych ‘Double Moon 2’, 2019, which forms the centrepiece of the Heide MOMA exhibition entails a complex entwining of the aesthetic and the political. The scene is suggestive of mountainous terrain, not dissimilar to the topography of the so-named Demilitarized Zone that marks the line of control between North and South Korea. Colours animate the composition suggestive of the bright hues of Korean flora and also of propaganda in both North and South. This projection of symbolic colourations into the space of nature highlights the political contestation for land as sovereign territory. Were it not for the perplexing element of the double moon, which hangs as a provocative conundrum in the opposing corners of the composition, one might think of this as no more and no less than a beautiful scene.

Colours such as these are important elements which Jaedon’s pictorial language for it is through their deployment that Jaedon presents his audience with the emotive collisions that arise when the social and the political seek to control the formation of society. In the painting titled ‘Truck’, 2020, for instance, the riot of colours that animate the clustering cloud of human figures suggests a general state of anarchy, stemming from the accumulation of individual actions. All in this composition are aiming to ‘get it the truck’ a strident vehicular metaphor for social advancement at the expense of all others. Here, the mess of radical individuality is plain to see. All the while, the truck remains the primary focus of attention, as if no other option is available to those who seek satisfaction. For Jaedon, the alternative is one of creativity and contemplation, leading to the remarkable outpouring of paintings and works on paper as seen in these two exhibitions.

DAMIAN SMITH, 2022

https://www.liminalmag.com/5-questions/eliza-jung

**Liminal is an anti-racist literary platform, publishing art, writing, interviews & more.

*ELIZA JUNG IS A KOREAN-AUSTRALIAN ARTS WORKER AND CURATOR

*JAEDON SHIN: DOUBLE MOON IS SHOWING AT HEIDE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART UNTIL 30 OCTOBER 2022.

NO.1

How did you first come into contact with Jaedon Shin?

In the summer before I began uni, I visited the RMIT Grad Show; it was then and there I encountered Jaedon Shin and his works for the first time. It was in that exact order—I saw Jaedon first, surrounded by his works on paper. This moment must have had a striking impact on me, as I’ve followed his career ever since. Over the last decade, I have had the privilege of witnessing Jaedon Shin’s artistic practise grow and shift.

So, when I was offered the opportunity to curate an exhibition at Heide,, the first artist I thought of was Jaedon. Not only did his unwavering commitment and dedication to his practice over the last decade both inspire and challenge me, I could see that Jaedon and I shared a mutual interest in the transitional experience of migrant communities. Along with his visual works, his personal narratives play an important role in conceiving Jaedon Shin: Double Moon. Jaedon is in his early sixties, and started making art in his late forties, enrolling in classes at RMIT. He’s shared with me so many stories from his life; from his twenties, when he worked as a social activist fighting for democracy in South Korea, to his thirties, when he grew a successful jam factory business! I wanted to bring light to his experiences, and to make space for more diversity in age, for emerging visual artists within the art scene.

NO.2

Tell us about the process of curating Double Moon.

In one of my very first meetings with Jaedon, he started the conversation, ‘In my twenties, the Soviet Union fell and the Berlin Wall came down...’ to which I responded, ‘I’m sorry, please pause—I need to take notes!’ Jaedon and I share the same native country, South Korea. As such, I initially approached this project with great confidence that we will be able to have insightful discussion without any cultural or language barriers. Yet as we began to work together, it became clear how the vast difference in lived experiences and generations posed great challenges. However, it was this challenge that made the process of curating Shin’s works the most thrilling. Sometimes our conversations felt like a history lesson, and other times it felt like I was speaking with family.I also became acutely aware of the privileges that I unknowingly took for granted as a younger immigrant. I’m what is considered a 1.5 generation immigrant, not born in Australia but arriving early enough to pass as one. As such, my experience in the arts has been quite distinct to Shin’s experiences. His dedication and care will stay with me for the rest of my curatorial journey.

NO.3

You write that Jaedon creates dream-like worlds in order to interrogate his identity. I’d love for you to speak more on this; in current discourse, identity seems to have such concrete edges, and I’m so interested in this aspect of dreaminess.

The very first exhibition title that I had proposed for the exhibition was ‘NEITHER-LAND’. I think this title in a sense narrows down the dreaminess that can be found in Jaedon’s works, especially when considering one’s identity as an immigrant in Australia.I’m always interested in the uniqueness of everyone’s transnational experience and in the case of Jaedon, it was made acutely obvious through his continual travel between Korea and Australia. Through this frequent travel Jaedon stays connected to both countries not only physically but socially and culturally. To me, his experience reflected the state of surreal existence where you belong and un-belong at the same time.

We chose the final title, ‘Double Moon’, because the recurring motif of two moons speaks of Jaedon’s feeling of duality. To borrow some of Jaedon’s words, the question of identity in Jaedon’s practice is a question of ‘dichotomy that everyone has, which is about good & evil, you & I, the self & the other, and finally knowing & not knowing.’

NO.4

I won’t be cruel and ask if you have a favourite piece in the exhibition—! But I’d love to know, is there a piece which particularly resonates with you?

At the risk of giving a boring answer- it would have to be the Double Moon! I might even go as far to say that the entire exhibition is centred around it. Double Moon is a two panel large scale canvas painting. It depicts two full moons shining in the night sky looking down on the activities that are taking place in the mountain. As a lover of stories, I often stood in front of the work wondering about the various unfolding of events taking place amongst the trees. Other times, I wondered how it feels to be the moon, overseeing all that is below.

NO.5

As the curator, what kind of responses are you hoping to evoke with this exhibition?

Honestly I want everyone to love Jaedon’s work as much as I do.I think that’s what all curators ultimately hope for. I hope that some of the audience will see his work and recognise the narrative quality within. I hope the works will speak to not only those from immigrant backgrounds, but anyone living in Australia, as I believe the question of duality, or maybe always wrestling with our identities, in a constant state of flux, is universal.

FIND OUT MORE

heide.com.au/exhibitions/jaedon-shin-double-moon

Soo-Min Shim (Arts Writer, https://soominshim.wordpress.com)

*Currently working on her PHD Thesis: ‘The Gyopo Gap: Contemporary Art and the Korean Diaspora’ at Australian National University

Anyoung haseyo (hello) in Korean translates to “Are you at peace?” We greet each other with well-wishes for peace. Not prosperity, fortune or success. The humble offer of being calm, of being whole.

I feel that there is a certain irony in this greeting, from a country that has not been whole for 69 years. Peace seems distant for a country whose borders were constructed from warfare and consolidated through a series of post-war military dictatorships.

In Don Mee Choi’s DMZ Colony (2020) political prisoner Ahn Hak-sop who was tortured from 1953 to 1995 for protesting South Korean totalitarianism and United States occupation, states that Korea is “a country that’s not a country, a divided country.”

After the Korean peninsula was divided into two in 1953 by the 38th parallel North, South Korea’s first president Syngman Rhee’s repressive authoritarianism sparked student-led demonstrations as early as 1960 leading to Rhee’s ousting. In 1961, General Park Chung-Hee led a military coup which saw him in power for the next 18 years. Park was assassinated in 1979 and General Chun Doo-Hwan took control through another military coup. In 1980, Chun declared full martial law throughout the nation. Chun shut down universities, banned political activity and arrested student leaders as well as political rivals.

In Gwangju, a city on the South-Western tip of the peninsula, local university students began to demonstrate against the martial law government. They were fired upon, killed and beaten by government troops. In response, local citizens took up arms and nearly a quarter of a million people participated in the uprising. Whilst official government statistics state that around 200 people (mostly civilians) died during the massacre, Gwangju activists, students and civilians state that the number is closer to 2000.

Gwangju is full of reminders of this history. The large public square where the protestors gathered is empty. Jeonil Building, a dilapidated and abandoned 10 storey building next to the public square has been left untouched. Its exterior is pock-marked by bullet wounds.

Minjung art, a socio-political art movement, was established in response to the Gwangju Massacre in 1980. Translating to “the people”, Minjung used woodblock printing and painting to critique Chun’s authoritarian government. Minjung artworks were characterised by a celebration of the working class and a call for democratisation and Korean reunification. In many ways, Minjung was an artistic reckoning with capture, torture and massacre.

Decades later in 2020, Don Mee Choi writes in DMZ Colony that “the language of capture, torture, and massacre is difficult to decipher.” In her attempt to understand this language Choi turns to what she calls “mirror words” which are seemingly nonsensical words created by mirroring the written word. She writes that “mirror words are meant to compel disobedience, resistance… mirror words flutter along borders.” Choi finds freedom in mirroring as she understands “mirrors as sites of translation, deformation zones.”

Whilst Minjung art unflinchingly reflected Korea’s socio-political concerns in a language that was accessible and immediate, Choi’s “mirror words” construct a new vocabulary entirely. They are novel yet still exist in relation to the original decipherable words, creating new modes of meaning that are different, yet also apart.

‘Peace’ is not immediately recognisable in the volatile polychrome paintings of artist Jaedon Shin. In Shin’s Double Moon 2 (2017), we are overwhelmed by the collision of jagged contours of colours. Serrated peaks of mountaintops crash together in waves on the large-scale canvas. Shin’s brushstrokes are distressed and frenetic.

There is only the promise of peace in the slim margin at the top of the canvas. Two orbs shine down, their faces rotund. They are whole, full and at peace. Viewing the large canvases, our own necks crane upwards to the night sky in yearning.

In History Landscape (2017) the mountains are again fragmented, their fractures outlined in a bloody red. It is a hellish landscape as pale blue outlines of skeletons and skulls scattered on the fields can be discerned. Silhouettes of soldiers yielding guns and donning metal helmets are outlined in a translucent blue in the foreground.

Again, the double moon is present yet in this canvas they seem indifferent and painfully distant. They stand as silent witnesses to brutality. Through the opposition of the seemingly static cosmos against the turmoil of human activity, Shin raises the question of history’s cyclical nature. Conflicts continue to erupt and cruelty, in its myriad forms, pollute the land that holds these traumas.

Born in 1959, one year before Rhee was ousted, Shin lived through the dictatorships of Park and Chun. Growing up and living in Gwangju in his 20s, he was part of the fomenting student movement against Chun. Shin’s friends and family witnessed the bloody massacre firsthand. For Shin, peace seems to be illusory.

Indeed, History Landscape (2017) is a more explicit reference to Korea’s turbulent history. There are certainly traces of a Minjung art influence and a comparison with his Minjung peers might allow for a broader appreciation of the magnitude of the political unrest in Korea in the 1980s. Yet, Shin’s practice cannot be reduced to simplistic Minjung stylistic influences. There is a Minjung spirit perhaps in his investigation of socio-political themes, but the abstracted figures also speak to more existential questions of migration, movement, temporality and history.

Unlike the sentimental, nostalgic and victorious images of reunification often depicted in conventional Minjung art, Shin’s paintings are ambiguous as there is no ‘perfect’ unity. The double moons, though hovering in tandem, are slightly different colours; one is a paler blue, the other tinged red.

Rather than embodying a dogmatic stance on North and South Korea, Shin depicts the complex, paradoxical entanglement of Korea’s reality in which both are separate but also together. From this cultural perspective, Shin expands into greater ontological enquiries on the bifurcation of conflict that is predicated on binaries such as us versus them, good versus evil, knowing and not knowing. In Double Moon 2 and History Landscape the tumult of the human realm renders it impossible to distinguish enemy from ally, therefore possibly pointing to the myopia and the folly of dichotomy. In History Landscape amongst the pale blue details, banners are raised in protest. Yet the characters are indecipherable as Shin obscures the ideology under which these people gather, thereby strategically refusing to brand himself under a single ideology. Instead, through the device of ‘mirroring’ it is possible to see an emancipation towards a bigger understanding of historical events, where ‘both’ sides are reconciled.

In Shin’s new world of mirroring, people and places are different, yet also apart.

Date: 11 June - 30 October 2022

Location: Kerry Gardner & Andrew Myer Project Gallery

Curator/s: Eliza Jung (guest curator)

Jaedon Shin’s paintings vibrate with colour, memory and imagination and draw from his formative years in South Korea.

Through his practice Shin contemplates inter and trans cultural experiences-interrogating his dual identity as a Korean and Australian subject and the enduring impression of his upbringing in Korea-a divided nation, where each side of the country lives in apprehension, fear and longing for the other – combined with the experience of being a migrant in Australia. Shaped by these two continents the artist feels a sense of displacement and disconnection to both territories. Through the creation of dream-like worlds Shin explores narratives that are often highly personal and critical in nature and that reveal a desire for human connection, identity and belonging.

Intended Purpose- Video interview with Jon Oldmeadow

Venue- Heide Museum, Project Gallery Space + Studio Space

Interviewer- Eliza Jung (will be edited out)

Interviewee- Jaedon Shin

Due Date- 20th of June (Date of Video shooting)

Q 1. Can you please tell us a little bit about yourself?

Hi, my name is Jaedon Shin. I’m a practising visual artist in Melbourne. 15 years ago, I came to Australia. At that time I was 47 years old. I enrolled in RMIT University to study Fine Art, majoring in Drawing. After graduating, I became a full time artist and focused only on my practice and exhibitions. During the last decade, my practice has been oil and acrylic paintings and drawings about human nature and history. And showing in both Melbourne and Seoul.

Q 2. I understand that you were not a painter in Korea, can you tell me more about your life before you became a painter?

I was born as a baby boom generation after the Korean War. I grew up under the military dictatorship regime. I was influenced by an anti-government movement in which my family members were involved. Just after entering university in Seoul, there was a historical event, Gwangju massacre in 1980. It happened in my birth place where my family and friends lived. So naturally I became engaged with the student democratic movement against the military government. Afterwards, I belonged to the group of social activism, such as labor and urban poor movement.

After the achievement of democracy by the huge people power, I stayed some more years in the social movement to reform the society, but eventually I left to find my own job. I was fortunate to build my own business. After 15 years of my business, I stopped and moved to Australia.

Q.3 Can you talk about your relationship with art and painting, when did you start painting and what you are exploring within your work? (what does art mean for you now)

When I arrived in Melbourne, I didn’t hesitate to enter art school. I thought it was a way of enjoying my life. However, in art school, I immediately realised that art practice was the only thing that I could devote my whole life to. This idea came to my mind through numerous conversations with artists and teachers whom I met in the school.

At the beginning of my practice, my concern was about people in plight. My subject matters were found in the historical events or social issues such as war, conflict, terrorism, refugee etc. But gradually, my subject has been expanded to psychological aspects of human conditions. In other words, it has been changed from speaking to questioning.

Q 4. Is your identity as a Korean- Australian important in your practice?

When I had an exhibition in Ballarat 2017 , the local newspaper, “The Courier” interviewed me. The reporter described me as a Korean - Australian artist. That was the first time that I recognised myself as a Korean-Australian. Before that I thought I was just a Korean living in Australia. After that, I couldn’t avoid the identity issue in my art practice.

I think it’s difficult to make works that don't reveal my identity. So it is important, but my dealing with identity issue is not manifesting of the issues like racism, gender, discrimination, hatism, social political isolation. It is more about looking at myself and my surroundings.

Q 5. How does your transcultural experience influence your work

During the last decade, I split my time and practice into two countries, Australia and South Korea. However, interestingly, important shifts in my practice always happen in Australia. There may be 3 reasons.

Firstly, when I am in Korea, I don’t need to think about my identity or think about feeling isolated. Everytime I come back to Australia, I feel like a separate being as I stayed in my studio much longer than in Korea.

Secondly, compared to too much information and too noisy in Korea, I have less information in Australia. It is partly because of the language barrier. That means that I have more time to contemplate about the noisy Korean peninsula and more time to practice in Melbourne studio which is more quiet.

Finally, it is about self-censorship in my mind when I work in Korea. Modern contemporary Korea has absolute freedom of speech and expression. My self-censorship in Korea is from the military dictatorship and collective society mind set. I break from the long habit of self-censorship in Australia. Practising in Australia gives me more freedom.

Q.6 What are you hoping that viewers will take away from an encounter with your paintings?

I want the viewers would pause in front of my painting for a while thinking and reminding of something from their past experiences. It can be forgotten memories of childhood, hometown and their home countries.

My works are partly depicting the feeling from immigrant experiences. As my artist friend, David Thomas, told me that “everyone is an immigrant in Australia”. He talked me his experiences as an Irish immigrant with a lot of empathy from my paintings. I think that this dual identity exists in every Australian’s mind. I want the viewers think about my paintings are reflection of their stories.

Q 7 . Double Moon 2 sits at the centre of this exhibition, both visually and conceptually, can you tell us more about this work and its underlying concept

This is a quite large scale mountainscape. Almost entire canvases are filled with huge mountains.And there are two moons floating quietly on the mountains. Contrast to the chill silence in the night sky, various colours are sparkling in the middle and lower parts of the mountains.

You may have a question about two moons. There cannot be two moons. It’s not possible. In fact, this is not from real life. It’s from my dream. It is a dream I can only dream in Australia far away from my home country.

So you might wonder why I have two moons in my mind. This painting is my psychological landscape, psychological panorama of history. It’s a landscape as a place of history. And it’s an impact of history on human life.

When I started these paintings a few years ago, my first question was about fighting in the night time. “When night battles take place in mountain area, how can we identify our side from enemies?” It’s so dark that we cannot see anything. In a great fear, are we going to attack anybody? And kill each other? Are we fighting against each other when we don’t know who is who?

Some people might think, this is about South Korea and North Korea. Because I’m Korean. But I’m not a history painter. I’m more interested in the human condition and its paradox in our contemporary lives.

Morea importantly, it’s about contemplations of a divided self. This painting, Double Moon2 is my question about the dichotomy of the world.

And it is a poetic metaphor. It is a dichotomy that everyone has, which is about good & evil, you & I, the self & the other, the enemy & our side, and finally knowing & not knowing.

Q 8. You quite often repeat motifs and forms within your work, such as the double moon, can you speak a little about your use of reoccurring imagery and discuss some of the other symbols and motifs that are meaningful to you?

At the beginning of my practice, I didn’t use many motifs and symbols. I slowly began to use repeated motifs like agricultural land, flowers (azalia) , mountain, colour, specific colour pink.

Firstly, agricultural land and mountain represent the place of Korean history. Those places are suggested as place of people’s life and place of historical events.

Secondly, as you see, pink colour is sometimes quietly dominant in my painting. It is the colour of azalea flowers. In the spring time in Korea, azaleas are covering all the peninsula without dividing into North and South Korea. So this pink is suggested as a solidarity.

There is a repetition of double moon. They are actually one moon divided into two representing divided self.

As a whole, repeated motifs and forms within my works are suggesting poetic narratives rather than speaking boldly and directly.

Q 9. Are there any artists or thinkers that you find influential or that you admire?

I have been working under the influence of many artist, hundreds of artists. Among them, Albert Tucker was my first influencer in my practice in Australia.

The second influential artist to me is Gongjae who is an aristocrat and artist from the 17th century in Korea. Like Rembrandt, he made a great ‘self-portrait’. I painted him repeatedly, becuase I recognized his honesty in looking at his own ‘self’.

During the pandemic, I read the book titled ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustura’ written by Friedrich Nietzsche. I liked the concept of Ubermensh in the book. Ubermensh is like superman but he is a philosopher.

In my painting, ‘Listen’, I painted my imagination of Ubermensh at that time. Maybe I wanted to express myself or anyone in the lockdown situation as Ubermensh listening to music. It was quite interesting that I depicted Ubermensh not as a strong hero with confidence of free will, but as a child looking around the world.

Q.10 What does this exhibition mean to you

This exhibition at Heide museum is the most significant and honourable one for me. Because this is my first show at the public institution in Australia. And this is Heide!!

Heide Museum is a place of my memory. When I started art practice in Melbourne, I frequently visited Heide to look at Albert Tucker. Heide was the only place to look at Albert Tucker’s paintings when I wanted to look at. In my view, he had an energy to engage the society of his time in Australia. I wanted to follow him from that point of view.

Also why this exhibition is so meaningful to me, because it’s curated by Eliza Jung. We are sharing same ethnic background, so she was quite good at finding and expanding the core concept of this exhibition.

Q.11 What is next for you, what are you ambitions for the future of your practice?

Comparing my artistic journey to an Orchestra symphony, I’ve just finished the first movement. In other words, over the past decade I have explored the subject of my work and I think I’ve just presented it. In the next movement, I will try to make all kinds of variations on the subject presented. In the process, I will have to take more risks and experiments with new methodologies.

Two Persons Show ‘Transcendence’ (Jaedon Shin/David Freney-Mills), Gallery Elysium, Melbourne

10 July - 1 August 2021

This exhibition at gallery Elysium explores the notion of transcendence; both in a spiritual and general sense of going beyond and overcoming obstacles. The two artists Jaedon Shin and David Freney-Mills both live in Hawthorn and were in contact during the lockdowns of 2020 to discuss the challenges the lockdowns posed for their creativity and output. It was during this dialogue that the title and concept for this exhibition was born.

In Shin’s case Opera music nurtured both he and his wife in their home during the lockdown of 2020 and carried their spirits though this uncertain period. This musical influence filtered through into the artwork Shin was producing at the time. For example, in his major piece The Other we see a figure rising into space within which are coloured dots that are evocative of musical notes. The abstract nature of sound mixed with the narrative of human stories of love and conflict contained in Opera music allowed Shin an imaginative space to transcend worldly cares and a challenging situation. As a result of the lockdown Shin could turn his attention further inward, and in that process expand his vision to create a synthesis of figurative and abstract elements to communicate his experience of transcendence.

Through 2020 Freney-Mills produced work inspired by his time on an artist residency program in Haenam, South Korea in 2019. Recalling the vividly green forest near the residency through which he strolled each morning and the sites of cultural significance he visited, he began a series of works when back in Melbourne featuring a green palette.

This colour evoked for the artist a sense of renewal and growth, which in turn led to the creation of Porous Amorphous no.52 featuring pink, a colour of optimism and hope. Freney-Mills also took refuge in poetry during the lockdown and his work reflects the process of realisation after hearing or reading words that inspire us, which may be repeated like mantras to create energy and transcend limitations.

Artist statement for ‘Transcendence’ exhibition

10 July 2021

During the lockdown last year, every night I watched numerous operas via online streaming service. Mostly they were melodramas about love, desire, betrayal, revenge, death, and so forth. Interestingly, watching them helped me not only to get out of the strong sense of isolation, but also to have opportunities to think deeply about ‘the self’ (myself) and ‘the other’ (non-self), and the relationship between them.

In the daytime hours, I worked on a series of paintings which became about Eros and love as an active principle for the artist and even to philosophers when creating work. Without Eros artwork can be dry and hollow. While listening to Opera I saw how much it contained about human nature and how much of human nature is based on instinct and a search for love, sometimes in other people, in objects of mystery, or in the act of creation itself. I imagined a perfect erotic, noble and flawless love manifested in different forms. The object of love is the eternal Other I can never reach.

‘Eros’ is one of my paintings inspired by stories and music of the operas. In another painting, lovers float in the air like twinkling stars in the night sky. They are full of desire but know they can never fully possess the object of their love. The music that resonates in the night sky is sweet and mysterious and love is a mystery never to be fully accessed.

Artist statement for Group Exhibition "In a foreign land"(20 Mar-10 Apr 2021) at E-Hive Gallery, Melbourne

Curated by Chunggang Du

I do not like doing just illustrations of an idea. Instead, I want to represent a critical relationship to the idea. Rather than copying the real world, I try to engage my own life into my practice and this is the way I interpret the society. So the subject is always “I”- “I” who is currently living in Australia as an Asian immigrant artist.

Australia gives me a lot of freedom. Although that is not to say that my native country- South Korea- do not have freedom. As a matter of fact, there is an excessive amount of freedom in South Korea as a result of my own generation’s protest against long time military dictatorship. Yet I still have difficulties in thinking and expressing without self-censorship. This censorship has been seeded in my mind from birth, maybe earlier..from my father's generation. In contrast, I feel entirely liberated from self-censorship in Australia. However, this blissful freedom is not without the sense of deepest isolation from the mainstream. Strangely enough, my current practice relies on these two things -freedom and isolation, lightness and weight, good and evil, “I” and “The Other”, enemy and friend, such a dichotomy forms the foundation to proceed my contemplation in art making.

For me, painting is always full of enigma.

Jaedon Shin

Group Exhibition ‘In a foreign land’ at E-Hive Gallery, Melbourne

20 Mar-10 Apr 2021

A foreign land, faraway from homeland, is a place of migrants and guests. It is the destination of those who have left their homeland, their family and their home, in search of change and newness for the sake of their ideals.

Since ancient times, migration has been a necessity for human beings to survive. People move to other places, either to escape from war or famine, or for religious and political reasons, or in pursuit of the future. A bird chooses a good tree to live in, a man chooses a wise ruler to serve. People always want to have their own choice and freedom, a place to rest their souls with respect.

People used many terms to describe this type of person: wanderer, faraway, solitary, and so on.

Newcomers to a new land encounter many problems and frustrations. Cultural understanding and integration is a very important and profound issue. Some immigrants in Western countries are unable to integrate into mainstream society for the rest of their lives and are forever regarded as the ‘other’ to foreigners. The reason for this is either ostracism or self-imposed conformity to the rules. The old Chinese saying “follow the customs” is an exhortation to take the initiative to integrate into the local mainstream.

Asian immigrants to Western countries are seen as part of the multicultural society and have made a significant contribution to its construction. Australia is a multicultural society with a tolerant political system and social environment however, there are a few who still retain the white superiority mentality of the colonial and White Australia policy, which has led to the exclusion of Asians and people of colour, thus dividing society.

The Chinese word ‘他’-‘He’ or ‘The Other’. In post-colonial theory, Westerners are often referred to as the subjective ‘self’ and the colonised people are referred to as the ‘other’. The other and the self are conceptually opposed to each other. The concept of the Other has deep roots in Western philosophy and is widely used in postmodern Western literary criticism. Because it suggests a condition of marginality, inferiority, oppression and exclusion, it has been used by righteous scholars in Western literary theory as an important element of theoretical construction and criticism in order to defend the values of equality, freedom and democracy.

The psychological alienation and frustration of new Asian immigrants as a result of social realities and racial prejudices due to historical reasons has a negative impact on multicultural societies. An open mind and active integration into the mainstream is the key to gaining a voice, and changing prejudices and treating non-European communities with tolerance is the basis for social harmony and progress.

Art is the most important form of emotional communication. Art should be used to raise problems, not to solve them.

This is the only way to draw the attention of the whole community.

The group exhibition includes five artists, all of whom have returned to Australia to complete their Masters and PhD degrees at tertiary institutions and are actively involved in local art projects and exhibitions.

Xiaoyu Bai’s paintings have a sense of the passage of time, as seen in the early works of Richard Gerhard. This series of fountain paintibngs, in which water in frozen in motion, is a deconstruction of the visual representation of water and a suggestion of the cycle of life.

Ning Chen uses black and white photography to present scenes of life in the Melbourne community, attempting to abstract the surface from the complexities of colour and restore the inner reality of the objects. It is only in the relationships between the visible characters that the imprint of the times and the environment on the community is captured.

Chonggang Du often uses books and old newspapers as symbols to convey through surreal combinations the negative effects of modern civilization and man’s subjective interference with nature, as well as the subconscious suppression and inhibition of social groups.

Jaedon uses an expressionist approach to contemporary life and spirituality. The strong colour contrasts create a solemn atmosphere like that of a church window painting. The use of red in the painting is not cheerful, but rather gives the impression of a lingering pain in the heart.

Kuang Zai again uses a realistic painting style to represent scenes of children’s daily activities. The silent scenes and solitary figures give one a sense of peace as well as a sense of inexplicable danger.

Curator: Chonggang Du

Solo Exhibition 'The Other World' at ACAE Gallery, Melbourne (10 Aug.- 15 Sept. 2019)

Damian Smith (Director, ACAE gallery)

“The Other World” is a survey exhibition of paintings by Melbourne-based artist Shin Jaedon. Born in South Korea in 1959, Shin migrated to Australia in 2007. The exhibition features oil paintings selected from distinct bodies of works, created over the previous ten-year period. The prolific nature of Shin’s studio practice is glimpsed in the selection of paintings. Shin’s themes include his personal responses to Melbourne along with memories of life in South Korea. The contrast between the two localities is a noteworthy feature of Shin’s practice, especially so when one considers the artist’s responses to the divide between North and South Korea, as contrasted with the multicultural environs of Melbourne.

For the title of the exhibition, ‘The Other World’, inspiration stems from the perceived psychological spaces detected in many of the paintings. The suggestion of ‘otherness’, which arises for instance, in the artist’s depictions of scenes beyond the 38th Parallel or ‘demilitarised zone (DMZ)’ between the two Koreas, highlights those elements of difference between the contrasting systems. Shin’s fascination with humans as ‘relational beings’ is apparent also in his depictions of life in Melbourne. Included here are cafe scenes and the tense theatre of private house auctions as witnessed by the artist in his local neighbourhood. Shin’s bold brushwork and vibrant palette amplify the relationships and interactions between the self and other.

(Co-curated by Damian Smith & Helen Yu, ACAE(Australasian Cultural Arts Exchange) Gallery, Melbourne, Australia / 2019)

Artist statement for 'The Other World' at ACAE Gallery, MElbourne (10 Aug.-15 Sept. 2019)

While I am generally quite concerned by issues within society, my observational paintings of Melbourne do not contain any specific message related to these preoccupations. Rather, they are a response to my daily life and surroundings. Earlier I had made attempts at pictorial statement about issues pertaining to refugee and Australia’s indigenous peoples, but I felt such paintings were awkward as they did not stem from my own experience.

In relation to my practice I continue to ask the question:

Can the tragedy of ‘the other’ observed in the media landscape be appropriated for my own story? Can I, as someone who has moved from another country and culture, who can sometimes be seen as ‘the other’ and has experienced the alienation that results in this, in turn alienate others?

I cannot claim to have answers to that question yet in my depictions of Melbourne there is a capturing of daily life that I observe directly; people in cafes, restaurants, swimming pools and at house auctions. This is a more authentic response of mine and these subjects give me a range of psychological expression to explore parts of my own being as I continue to live between Melbourne and Seoul, Korea.

Another line of investigation in my art is the exploration of memories of the historical and social landscape of Korea. The geo-politiics of the Korean Peninsula divided into South and North, the complexity of political, social and economic events cast a long shadow over my works. In contrast to my work about Melbourne, social narratives in Korea in relation to my personal experience are a fertile source of imagery. This subject matter has broader scope than what I paint about Melbourne, yet ironically it is in Melbourne I feel the most freedom to explore ideas about the Korean narrative. This is due I believe to self-censorship as a result of living in a divided country over a long period of time; also through nearly three decades of military dictatorship, even though we have the freedom to say what we like in Korea today, this experience has left an indelible imprint on me, which is bypassed when living in Melbourne.

Korea is really a nation of ideology and philosophy. When grand narratives such as Socialism and Nationalism storm through the body of a society as they do in Korea, individuals become powerless victims sometimes. Ordinary people cannot notice what is going on in the process of history; the figures in my paintings such as soldiers have been thrust into their roles as tools of power. Even those who have power are anxious and have no idea of the direction history is taking them, the folly is present in my paintings which I represent in a subtle and humorous manner. The artist as an individual too has been choked under collectivist society in Korea in which one faction condemns the other through modes of thinking that rely on false dichotomies. The freedom of individuals is often oppressed by political interests that forcibly mobilise people under ideological banners claiming to represent justice.

Therefore the Korean narrative forms the most crucial part of my arts practice as it represents the many facets of experience from a majority of my adult life. After crossing half the Earth I can look back at the country I left without bias, self-censorship or societal pressures and bring my subjects to fruition. Being based in Melbourne has afforded me this perspective.

Jaedon Shin

*Solo Exhibition ‘Double Moon’ (BlackCat Gallery, Melbourne/24 Aug.-12 Sept 2017 & Soso Art Museum, Hawsoon, Korea /1-31 Oct. 2017)

‘Double Moon: The Rupture and Unity of Two Realities’

(David Freney-Mills, Artist & Writer, Melbourne, Australia / 2017)

The exhibition ‘Double Moon’ by Jaedon Shin features a host of figures whose function are like actors on a stage, they all play a part in evoking tensions and contrasts between his experiences growing up in post-war Korea and his current life spent between his country of origin and Australia. The experience of Shin’s father’s generation of the internecine conflict of the Korean war helped form a psychological mindset which the artist was exposed to as he grew up, as well as incidents such as the Gwangju massacre (which Shin’s family witnessed in 1980). It is from this historical backdrop that Shin’s cast of characters emanate, yet they are also fused with observations of the contemporary world around him. Via use of colour and line both as vehicle and filter for conjuring up his memories, he explores simultaneously both the contrasts and continuities between his past and present.

Despite some of the history behind Shin’s imagery he doesn’t assign strong individual characteristics or emotional facial expressions to his figures, their features are generalized which allows us to explore more our own feelings about what these figures might represent, rather than have our emotions pre-set by the artist. They are archetypes distilled from different aspects of Shin’s own self that have intertwined with pivotal chapters of Korea’s turbulent past and present. One might expect an artist to use earth or sepia tones when dealing with the past as a theme but the relationship between the artist and Korean history is a dynamic one which Shin conveys through his choice of highly chromatic colours. His figures are given life and movement appearing like brightly coloured neon signs at night, conjured up from Shin’s past and synthesized with lines and forms that sometimes have a digitized appearance inspired by our technology-driven world.

In the painting titled “Self-Portrait As A Young Warrior”, a young man holding a stick is reminiscent of a street protester, a figure which stems from a period of social conflict in South Korea when a student movement clashed against the military junta in power during Shin’s formative years as a youth (as mentioned earlier the artist’s family witnessed the Gwangju massacre in 1980). Though this historical background plays a part in Shin’s work he doesn’t illustrate any particular incident. His response is a subjective resuscitation of the trauma and stress he and others experienced from state violence and the fear involved when confronting it in the street. Shin’s art therefore is an act of catharsis and he uses the figures in his paintings as archetypal agents to achieve this; his work is part history lesson – part psychological cleansing. In conversation Shin says “I am not an activist, I’m an artist who has moved on from those days of protest. I wanted to say we are not warriors anymore and the war is over”. Shin doesn’t seek to prescribe one view of Korean history or promote a political message reinforced by a narrative. Of what use is that when even some of the ex-activists who confronted the junta’s army in the 80’s are now in power, in some cases behaving just as corruptly.

Like many artists and poets throughout time Shin has turned towards the moon as a subject, but with one eye on the objective reality of there being two Koreas, and another eye on his inner subjective life. With this synthesis of creative vision he has multiplied the moon into two, and by doing so he has fused both politics and poetics. The fact there are two moons silently hanging in his large landscape work is symbolic of two realities, although there is the common ground of the landscape and sky between the two adjoining canvases they are both split by a narrow yet irrevocable border. These two realities have much in common; colours that are a reminiscent of the street protesters and armed soldiers in his other works pulse underneath the dark hills. Night usually obscures our vision but the moons silently reveal a landscape of memories that are never far beneath the surface, by digging below like the crouching figure in one of his paintings Shin poetically examines the roots of Korea’s turbulence and it’s historical and current landscape split into two realities.

*THE COURIER (Local Daily Newspaper in Ballarat)

Exhibition an antidote to grey of winter

‘Shin’s world of colour’

By Michelle Smith

JAEDON Shin’s paintings are every bit as bright as he is.

The talented Korean-Australian painter has taken his observations of everyday life and injected bright colours and abstract strokes to create large-format artworks.

From the daily vignettes he witnesses along Burke Rd near his Hawthorn home to the lush tropics of Thailand where he recently completed an artistic residency, his big, bold paintings are an antidote to the grey of a Ballarat winter.

His solo exhibition Colourful World tells it like the paintings on the wall, with vivid artworks drawn from his exhibitions Dear Thanyaburi and Burke Rd as well as some created during artistic residencies in New York and Berlin.

The ambition with his paiintings is for them to be so vivid they “seem to hurt eyes” as they draw attention to the sometimes meaningless and monotony of human life and the anonymity of life in a busy world.

“I always want to make paintings like this,” he said.

“Most works are from my everyday life, so my works are from my observations of daily life.”

The paintings from his Dear Thanyaburi collection were created during his time at Rajamangala University of Techonology, Thanyaburi in Thailand.

“When I arrived and had a look at the area, I was captured by two very different scenes (that seem like two different worlds) that are a peaceful and beautiful campus of the university and a market outside the university which is very crowded with people, cars, motorcycles and all the shops along Khlong Hok,” he said.

“Not only the landscape of the campus, also the ordinary people in everyday life outside the campus are an important factor for my paintings.”

Mr Shin was born in South Korea and moved to Melbourne in 2007, and now splits his time between Melbourne and Seoul.

“The Lost Ones gallery interests me. I have been to Ballarat several times. I studied history in university and I really like Ballarat because of its strong history, vintage and heritage,” he said.

Mr Shin’s works are also highly regarded for their exaggerated reality and a self portrait is evident of this, showing the artist floating upside down.

Jaedon Sin-Colourful World is on display at The Lost Ones Gallery, 14 Camp St, Ballarat, until June 18.

31 May-18 June 2017

Solo show by Australian - Korean artist Jaedon Shin whose vividly colourful paintings draw our attention to the alienation of man in modern society. Shin paints impassive and emotionally inaccessible figures paused, or frozen in time, in liminal spaces or places of humdrum and limited transaction - in a subway, an almost deserted cafe, an empty market or playing the pokies.

His lurid, flat almost tropical settings are at odds with the anonymity, and cheerlessness of his people. Shin says "I do not hesitate to use raw colour directly from colour tubes", colours so vivid they "seem to hurt eyes" to highlight the sometimes meaningless and monotony of human life, particularly of " common people who are powerless and never truly free, living their lives patiently and stoically as a mere speck at an infinitesimal point in time within the landscape of the long course of history".

Solo exhibition 'Colourful World' at The Lost Ones Contemporary Art Gallery in Ballarat, Victoria, Australia (31 May-18 June 2017)

The world in my paintings is colourful. I do not hesitate to use raw colour directly from colour tubes. It became more clear during the residency* in Thanyaburi, Thailand. As a result, the colours of my paintings are strong and solid as if they seem to hurt eyes.

There is a figure in the colourful world of my painting. The figure lies in a deep silence as if they are captured by something or frozen in a moment. They are expressionless and anonymous. They are ordinary people who can be found around us such as a waitress in a café, tourists, a couple to shop, a girl in subway, a garden keeper, sellers in a tropical juice shop, and so on. They are countless. Monotony of these paused figures contrasts with the strong, bold, vivid colours. I intentionally exaggerate these contrasts.

The ultimate reason of my attention to people in a society is to express my empathy for plight of human kind. They are common people who are powerless and never truly free, living their lives patiently and stoically as a mere speck at an infinitesimal point in time within the landscape of the long course of history. My work starts from my awareness which history consists of these people’s monotonous or sometimes meaningless lives.

*2months (Feburary-March of 2017) of artist residency at Rajamangala University of Technology Thanyaburi, Thailand

Jaedon Shin

*Narakorn Sittites (Lecturer of Painting Department, Faculty of fine and supplied arts RMUTT, Thailand)

The Observer, name Shin Jaedon

47 year old Shin Jaedon was a man who was going to be successful in his business in South Korea. But he decided to sell his company and move to Australia and started to study art.

Our first encounter was in 2016 when I and my friends had an exhibition at Blackcat Gallery in Melbourne, Australia. He looked like earnest man but he was filled with humility at the same time. He always questioned when he was wondering about something in our artworks and gave us some of his ideas about our concept. But every question was full of interest for knowing something without any bias and it seemed that he really wanted to know all the answers that he just asked. That made me feel he really was interested in our works.

We met each other again in Thailand in 2017. This time he came with his lovely wife to Thailand as an artist for "The artist in residency project of faculty of fine and supplied arts" at RMUTT in cooperation with Blackcat Gallery for two months. During first couple of weeks, he spent his time for site investigation around university, and observing and planning what to do in this residency. At the same time, he learned about our culture, politics and way of life of people around here. After that, he suddenly started to work as if this is the last day of his working.

In order to fulfill the host’s duty, we liked to show him the other places of Thailand to know more about our country by taking him, but his answer was "I came for working not for traveling" (actually after that he said he was just afraid that he didn't have enough time to work). It surprised us because most of the foreign artists love to go somewhere else to see more Thailand but it's not just like that for this man, named Jaedon.

His interest is in everything around him. Small things such as a small garden and flowerpots in front of his studio and people that walk by drew his attention. There were more, for example, some ordinary places like the hotel where he stayed in or Thai tea shop outside the university. These things are just common things that most people don't pay attention to. But for him all these common things looked interesting.

The point of view from his perception about things around him is the core concept of his painting. His interests based on drawings that he learned at RMIT university in Melbourne make his paintings to express the beauty of ordinary things in a different way from we get used to. His paintings remind me of Italian painter Francesco Clemente and all the artists in Naive style. From the art form that he characterized by a rejection of Formalism, it makes sense to respond to his attitude towards the story so clearly. His painting is full of questions about what he saw and expresses his attitude from the perception.

The possibilities of making contemporary painting are the matter of his concept. Most of his painting is always questioning on what’s called “painting”. From social context of South Korea that he came from, politic issue is one thing he paid attention to. Political interests always appear in his paintings such as works of “Kim Jong-ill’s Funeral” series. One thing that makes his paintings really special is “Colors”. Colors in his painting are like main language to express his feeling. In each series, colors come from his deep perception.

His painting is the way of his seeing that he records time, feeling and his attitude in everything.

I am very pleased and honored to welcome such a committed artist. I have a good heart name, Jaedon Shin

2017.5.19

Solo exhibition ‘Dear Thanyaburi!’ at Rajamangala University of Technology Thanyaburi, Bangkok, Thalind

28 March - 1 April 2017

“When I arrived and had a look at the area, I was captured by two very different scenes(seem like two different worlds) that are a peaceful and beautiful campus of the university and a market outside the university where is very crowded with people, cars, motorcycles and all the shops along Khlong Hok (canal 6).

Both of these scenes inspired and stimulated me to draw my impulsion of creativity. I have been fascinated by organic forms of very green tropical plants and straight architectural lines of buildings in the campus. When I see outside from the inside of my studio through big windows, the combination of them inspired me. This may be because it would remind me of the harmony of nature and civilization or human beings living in nature. Not only this landscape of the campus, also the ordinary people in everyday life outside the campus are an important factor for my paintings. They appear in every painting which is green colour dominated with organic forms and straight architectural lines.

For this two months, I have painted what I wanted to do without any regret. I would like to thank you all the lecturers, students and local artists I have met there, and ultimately to Thanyaburi. “Dear Thanyaburi!”

Jaedon Shin

2017.3.30

Born in South Korea in 1959, Shin Jae-Don came to Australia in 2007, after graduating from RMIT University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts has spent his time between Seoul and Melbourne presenting regular exhibitions in both cities.

The bulk of Shin Jaedon’s work comprises figurative paintings of people seen in real life. As a commentary on the human condition, it can be understood that his paintings are born out of empathy for plight of human kind – the same empathy and concern which motivated his participation in the Korean democracy movements of the 1980s. He is driven by social conscience and compassion for ordinary people who are powerless and never truly free, living their lives patiently and stoically as a mere speck at an infinitesimal point in time within the landscape of the long course of history. This is equally true of the subject matter of his paintings and of socio-political circumstances in Korean national history.

There are three conceptual streams to be found in Shin Jae-Don’s work. The first is the concept of contemporary man in everyday life. This is seen in his paintings of commonly seen characters – from the expressionless faces of anonymous figures to specific characters we find in the world around us such as a temple monk, the landlady of a small local bar, the waitress in a café or a middle-aged woman sun-baking on a balcony. In portraying people pursuing mundane activities, the artist draws our attention to the loneliness and isolation found amidst the hustle and bustle of modern-day existence. The use of bold, vivid, cheerful colours serves to emphasise that isolation and sense of loneliness - the same isolation and loneliness that can be found in any city of the world, be it Seoul, Melbourne, New York or Berlin.

A second stream of Shin’s work delves into socio-political events surrounding the Korean people. He portrays events of both North and South Korea, from the now all but forgotten infiltration of armed North Korean guerrillas into South Korea in the 1960s, the funeral of Kim Jong-Il in December 2011, right up to the sinking of the Sewol Ferry just two years ago. The figures appearing in these scenes represent the characters who played a role in those events. Ultimately these are just ordinary people who were going about their lives until, by virtue of being at a place at a particular time, were swept up in social and political circumstances and became victims of history. By provoking in the viewer a sense of sadness for those affected, the artist’s work in fact serves to remind us of those nameless people who lived their lives in the harshness of history.

Although there is a temptation to categorise these works as political art, in fact, they fall more correctly into the genre of the portrayal of everyday life shaped by the politics which perfuse it. This is because when painting about a political event or issue the focus is not on expressing the artist’s personal political views or even the external socio-political circumstances, but rather on the internal emotional response triggered by the plight of the subjects occasioned by a particular event, since at any time one of us could be affected in the same way.

Over the past few years a third stream has emerged where we find the artist’s attention drawn to Gongjae Yun Du-Seo and Gyeomjae Jeong Seon. Work inspired by these two innovative Choseon dynasty artists differs considerably from the paintings in the first two streams and, based purely on the subject matter, they appear to be unrelated. A closer look at the deeper significance of those paintings however, reveals a common thread.

As pioneers in Korean genre painting and realist landscape painting in the 18th century, Gongjae and Gyeomjae are highly significant figures in Korean art history. Gyeomjae is outstanding for the fact that he did not blithely conform to the idealistic traditions of classical Chinese landscapes but instigated an innovative and realistic style portraying landscapes characteristic of the real Choseon. We can identify with his mountains and rivers and feel they really existed. Gongjae was another innovator in that he pioneered authentic Korean folk genre painting with such works as “Woman Digging Herbs”, “Weaving Straw Shoes” and “Carving wooden utensils”, all depicting peasants at work. Even though he himself was born into the nobility, he was exceptional in painting with a palpable affection for the common people - particularly those involved in manual labour. Each in his own way rejected convention and created a new approach.

Similarly, inspired by the creative essence of these artists, Shin Jaedon turned from convention and by so doing found the philosophy he wanted to be guided by. Gongjae’s genre painting in particular led him to find the vein he wanted to pursue in art. Through the tacit knowledge of Korean traditional art he developed his inner artist and found his roots.

It can be said that, regardless of the subject matter, the prime motivation of the artist is to communicate with society through his art. In considering all three streams, Shin’s work speaks through the past and will continue to speak to those who encounter his work in the future, questioning the direction of our lives and the level of compassion we have for our fellow man.

Anakie West/writer

2016.9.2

Solo exhibition ‘Kim Jong-Il’s Funeral’ at Yeh-in Gallery, Melbourne (29 Aug.-30 Aug. 2014)

“Kim Jong-Il was the Supreme Leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) from 1994 to 2011. He succeeded his father and founder of the DPRK, Kim Il-sung, following the elder Kim’s death in 1994. He died on 19 December 2011, whereupon his third son, Kim Jong-Un, was promoted to a senior position in the ruling Worker’s Party of Korea (WPK) and succeeded him.” (Quoted from Wikipedia)

During the process of this practice, I realised that this is not just a formal experiment. It was an act of self-criticism of my previous paintings, which were exhibited at Sobab Gallery in South Korea in March of this year. They were ‘history paintings’, which depicted the event of Kim Jong-Il’s funeral in 2011. The original works are made on large linen grounds, using traditional figurative oil painting techniques. I criticised myself on the formal elements of ‘history painting’ - big, oil, representative - which I have been interested in ever since I had entered the art world. In other words, I may hold an intention to argue that ‘this is not big, not oil, and not representative’.

The other thing I grasped through this practice is an idea of object making using my own paintings. Due to practicing in two countries, I do not currently have those paintings in Melbourne as I left them in South Korea after having an exhibition with them in March. Instead, I printed out the photographs of them to make small and similar sized panels. After that, I painted a red rectangular form with acrylic colour onto each photograph. As a result, the completed panels do not look like the actual paintings, but rather, are closer to well-manipulated crafts or objects. In this exhibition, I intend to show them as ‘a very simple linear form’.

The red rectangles blocking some parts of the images are a signal to the world. It is like a speech balloon in a cartoon. It is a sudden monologue or alert, while the spotlight is still on narratives. At the same time, it is an alert to the artist himself of the responsibility of reviewing what he is doing.

(29 August, 2014, Shin Jaedon)

Jaedon Shin was born in South Korea in 1959. The country was ruled by military dictatorship during the late 1970s and, tragically, Jaedon’s hometown was massacred in the spring of 1980.

At university Jaedon took part in the social reform movement, devoting his student life to a movement for democracy. This fed his interest

in depicting the figures in a social and political context, in his work exploring the idea of isolation, an outsider living in another country.

He also explores the notion of a person’s history and how it can affects them.

After moving to Australia in 2007, he found inspiration in Godwin Bradbeer’s work at the James Making Gallery. This led to him studying under Bradbeer from 2009 to 2011 at RMIT University. He was also taught by Peter Westwood and Greg Creek.

Since finishing art school, Jaedon returned to Seoul, Korea, where he held an exhibition of his work. Local newspapers praised his work for challenging an ambiguous society.

He has now returned to Australia to present another exhibition this month.

Here he talks to ArtsHub:

You can view the full detail of this news article on ArtsHub by clicking this link:

http://au.artshub.com/au/news-article/profiles/arts/jaedon-shin-painter-190581

**Artist's Talk for Solo Exhibition ‘Dwarf’ at Red Gallery, Melbourne / Saturday July 28, 2012

I’m working with the images from everyday life.

They are mainly photo images from various media, such as newspaper, advertisement fliers, magazines, internet, and my own photographs.

They are, as a whole, digital methodologies, all the real events, real scenes from the existing world. I believed that these photographic images were true because they were just mechanical reflections of the real/existing world.

Last year, on December, I was in Korea and Kim Jeong Il, North Korean political leader died, people in NK were crying and screaming in the extremely cold snowing streets in Pyeong Yang. When I saw the scenes at that time, I just as other people was shocked.

-. How can people crying like that, even if their leader died?- Actually, it was really unreal scene to me.

Then some questions arose in my mind.

-. What is real? Can I say that it is true what I look? How am I sure that they are real?

I became quite suspicious.

‘I never been to North Korea in my whole life, and I sit down here South Korea, and watch TV news, KJI’s funeral.

People are screaming in the streets, in the factories, on the square, everywhere in NK. However, what I am looking at is just digital images.

People can make any images with digital technology from nothing. In addition to that, political power in NK can make all the people in their country crying, screaming like mad people, totally mad people.’

I became suspicious more and more! In this way, the suspicions of the reality of the existing world became one of the subjects of my practice.

Furthermore, at the same time, I felt some strange feelings from those people. It was a kind of sublime from the people who are confronting the history. Everybody’s life lies on the history. History is composed of world people’s everyday lives.

I always have considered history as a heavy, weight subject in my life, as I have lived in the only country divided into two parts in the world in this century. But I suddenly realized that history could be really light, lighter than air, snow in air, because the people facing it are going through it.

I felt certain kind of sublime from the people confronting the history very heavy, weight but they never known the weight of history and the substance of history. That is the people what I want to express in my paintings and drawings.

Furthermore, I realized that I don’t have any right to despise them who are stepping forward silently into history.

I feel an unknown shiver when I face a canvas (or paper) for depicting these figures. But I’d like to remove its weight from my works.

Because ‘when we say that we know what we say, but at the same time, it can be said that we don’t know that’.

Through the practice, I wanted to make them to be light like dust and feather, lights and stars in the night sky.

Thank you.

Peter Westwood (An artist, writer and curator based in Melbourne.)

Today, as a form of knowledge, art may exist within a space where knowing effectively co-exists with not knowing.

Such a contemporary condition exists beyond the binaries of modernism and gives permission for the artist to acknowledge an unspoken truth: ‘I know and yet I don’t know’.

For Shin Jaedon the awareness of knowing and not knowing may be further intensified through his life experiences of living in South Korea where, on a daily basis, he was always aware of the dichotomy of two divergent versions of the same country.

Jaedon’s conception of the world, like most Koreans, was formed through the consciousness of two territories, one experienced and one imagined, each facing the other off, across a heavily fortified demilitarized zone.

According to Jacques Lacan all of us are split between a conscious side, a mind that is accessible, and an unconscious side, a series of drives and forces which remain hidden to us. Lacan states that we are what we are on the basis of something that we know to be missing from our conscious awareness: our understanding of the other, the unconscious, or the other side of the split out of which our unconscious must emerge. And in turn the unconscious attempts to fill in the gap caused by the very existence of the unconscious. In other words, we know and we don’t know our psychological entirety.

Within his paintings Shin Jaedon explores what it means to both know and to not know through the general theme of human alienation, distress, and isolation. While these works are formed around photographic references, it seems that they could only have ever been actualised as painting, the markmaking contaminating and distorting the imagery to imply a volatile and unpredictable reality. The figures in these paintings appear as some-things formed beyond the limitations of photographic representation, embodying a sense of the unconscious other, and implying ruin or loss.

These works attempt to suggest the unceasing awareness that we all hold within our consciousness, of the unconscious other within a separate or parallel terrain.

The surfaces of these paintings appear incidental or direct, suggesting a distressed, transient and volatile setting. Jaedon states that he is “very suspicious of this world” but that his “destiny is to play with these ‘unstable’ images from the daily media as a form of comprehending the world, and that perhaps this understanding may only be possible through metaphor”.

The imagery in Jaedon’s works appear to induce a place where one is unable to decide if the location is one of fiction or remembrance, or a blend of the two.

Eventually these works are focused more in interpretation than representation and form a cipher or code of the sub-conscious mind, evoking an ungraspable counter world outside of what we can know.

I learned in my childhood that a work of fiction is not necessarily enclosed within the mind of its author but extends on its far sides into little known territory1.

11 July 2012

Notes:

1. Murnane, Gerald, Barley Patch. Artamon NSW: Giramondo Publishing, 2009. p68

*Solo Exhibition ‘Dwarf’ at Red Gallery, Melbourne (11-28 July 2012)

Finally I became a stranger here (in Australia). Sometimes people whom I encounter in everyday life are surprisingly unfamiliar.

Whenever this unfamiliarity comes across to me, not knowing the exact reason, I used to question that these people exist as a real being or not. Everyday I meet hundreds of images from the media, such as newspaper, magazine, advertisement fliers, and internet. I know that these are real events in the real world. But I am so much doubtful all of them. How can I know that this is real. I never been to North Korea, but I believe that the military march and screaming people after the death of their ‘Dear Leader’ are true. How can I say that I know this world which is seemingly quite unreal? Actually what I am looking at is just machinemade digital image, which is a combination of zero and one (0, 1). Therefore this can not be real, rather it can be fake or new invention of unreal. I am very suspicious of this world.

Nevertheless, it is my destiny that I have to play with those unstable images as metaphorical comprehension. When I paint such strange and odd figures on canvas, I have a feeling that I get involved into them eventually to be a lonely, isolated being as myself.

I become an extremely small portion of the whole scene. Therefore I inevitably expose myself as a disabled person.

In my painting, the hunchbacked dwarf seems like a projected self, as a stranger, onto the screen of the unreal world.

At the same time, dwarf is an expression of philosopher. Unfortunately, contemporary philosopher turns up as a dwarf, because of his powerlessness. The outer world is so boisterous that this dwarf cannot find any of his place.

Not before long, he was the only being who recognizes the world in a whole, so he had been an absolute power in various names.

Now the world is too big and confusing to understand it. For him, it is the world of giants. It is a contemporary human tragedy because all he can do is to contemplate the world alone at night time.

Jaedon Shin

The people whom I encounter in everyday life are isolated individual human beings, but I sense the weight of a mass of human beings from them.

This weight is a kind of weight of history. The figures in my works refuse to exist in a vacuum (pure space without any background) as simple forms of human beings. They coexist in definite spaces with historical, political and social background.

History is severe and unapproachable by normal individuals. We live in this situation, even though we never know true substance of history.

Everyone just lives without knowing the weight of history, nevertheless, lives of them are sublime. I do not have a right to despise them who are stepping forward silently into history. Although they are either the victims as fragments of a group, or normal people peacefully living, or politicians, or laborers, I inevitably feel nobility from the moments of their lives filling history.

I feel an unknown shiver when I face a canvas for depicting these figures. The weight of history is heavy and the images of human beings walking into history are sublime, but I would like to remove its weight.

Through the course of working, I want to make them to be light like dust and feather.

Furthermore, my desire is to obtain transparency of the time and space through my practice.