탐석: Hajung Shin
At the Boundary Between Object and Form
Text by Nayeon Gu (Art Critic)
(Translated by Gallery Chosun)
1.
In painting, the way an artist selects and handles a subject is a traditional practice. In the process of transforming something into an image on the canvas, a connection forms between the subject and the painter. When the subject is something like a stone; complete in itself, approaching it is entirely a matter of the artist’s consciousness. This awakens a silent object into its unique presence on the canvas. This is why Hajung Shin’s paintings can lead viewers to a moment of awareness.
Her work creates a clear, transparent tension between the artist’s consciousness and the subject. At the center of the canvas, careful relationships emerge: between individual and whole, culture and nature, and between the act of painting itself and the meanings it generates.
The tightly focused web of meaning in Shin’s work emerges through her choice of scholar’s stones (suseok). To understand this, we need to look at why and how she selects and transforms these stones. A stone is a metonym for nature and, in a sense, for the divine. As large stone monuments throughout history have shown, stones have served as markers of permanence and as mediators of faith in the afterlife. In East Asia, suseok developed as an object that embodies nature’s transcendence and permanence while also reflecting aesthetic taste. Stones gradually erode and form shapes over time, evoking admiration. An inherently self-sufficient object becomes individualised and culturally significant through human choice and the attribution of meaning.
When this self-contained existence shifts into an aesthetic rhythm, reflections on the stone’s form and colour emerge, and it is given a name. The subject who bestows this meaning is the artist – the “I”. On what basis does “I” transform an object into an aesthetic subject? The fluid boundaries between subject and object mark the stage in which the self becomes aware of the world and internalizes it. Painting, in turn, embodies objects as solid, meaningful presences on the canvas. The stone is both a witness to the artist’s conscious engagement with the world and a material through which painting explores the possibility of interaction with the subject.
Hajung Shin’s various depictions of suseok stand on the boundary between the physical object and its transformation into a singular illusion. A stone can be a Back View, a Mass, or even an Elephant, at once. This approach is not limited to natural stones. Flexible definitions of what counts as a “stone” now shape contemporary stones in our daily life. Concrete or ceramic objects, too, are absorbed into the realm of stone, questioning how we relate to material things.
Her blurring of boundaries is also reflected in her use of rapid brushwork and monochrome lines to form images. Swift strokes neutralize the stone’s heavy physicality while highlighting its essential form, filtering out conventional attributes and elevating it into a special object. Supporting this is the pedestal beneath the stone. Unlike a traditional sculpture base, which stabilizes and decorates, Shin’s pedestal allows the stone to float freely on the canvas. Through the interplay of stone and base, the object transforms into an expressive image shaped by the artist’s choice.
단서 (The Clue) (2016) series approaches objects in an intermediate state between stone and form, where a sculpted stone gradually returns to its essential nature over time. This connects to Shin’s 축축한 바위 (Damp Rock) (2016), in which she observed landscapes where the boundary between life and death seemed to vanish. The slow cycle of shaping stone into form and letting it return through weathering reflects the movement between transcendent nature and human existence, and mirrors how our senses partially receive the external world, interpreting it with their own meaning.
Just as the permanence and transcendence of stone have long been regarded as a kid of totem, the act of shaping natural objects into images or forms builds a small structure within the continuity of the world. The freedom to point to one stone among countless others and call it “this” is a choice and right granted within the inimitable order of nature. Hajung’s work places stones within a dynamic category, one that flows through countless possibilities. From everyday life to the cosmos.
For example, her recent work 우연한 예언 (Accidental Prophecy) (2018) can be seen as a massive stone that evokes a passage of experiences containing other stones within it. It is an imagined stone, yet traces of real life are subtly reflected in its form. Within this indeterminate shape, records of chance and necessity, joy and mystery enter the painter’s vast consciousness. Moments of pure insight; flashes that reach our awareness before reason or reflection, are also inscribed here.
I once encountered the Bangudae Petroglyphs. I could touch the uneven surface of a flat rock, shaped by the prayers of tens of thousands of years ago. Those ancient petitions remain in the stone’s hollows, resonating into the present. They possess a mysterious sense of time, lying quietly within nature until they suddenly intrude into our lived experience. Shin’s occasional treatment of stone as a locus of magical experience works in the same way: carving forms into the surface or letting the stone’s shape and texture stand in for aspects of life. This is a way of relating finite space to infinite time, and it is precisely this relationship that becomes the site where his paintings articulate meaning.
Sartre’s famous statement that “existence precedes essence” means that the world of experience toward which our consciousness is directed comes before any eternal truth or essence. If contemporary painting continues to explore and excavate this traditional practice, it goes beyond studying essence: it captures the presence of a particular individual and their awareness of the present moment and objects, translating it into images. Shin’s work similarly emphasizes that consciousness does not linger in abstract purity around essence.
To achieve this, she turned from observing landscapes to focusing on stones. Stones are everywhere, but fully making them one’s own is never simple. The same holds when bringing them into painting. While objects for depiction are ubiquitous, transforming them into a personal aesthetic meaning requires experimentation. What is significant in Shin’s work is that depicting chosen objects, intentionally or not, reveals inherent aspects of painting itself. A single object moves toward form. What elevates it beyond a mere object? What guides it toward a distinct shape, and how is its meaning discovered? Confronting Shin Hajung’s painting is, in essence, the beginning of this questioning.