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EXHIBITIONS
Dream of Africa: Shin Sangho
Instinctively innovative, in recent years Shin Sangho, an inveterate traveler, has been especially inspired by Africa, its art and the unique energy and totemic power of the animal world he vividly observed there. Relating simultaneously and tangentially to ancient Korean shamanistic rites, symbols and artifacts, Shin has proceeded to create dramatic animal forms as ceramic sculptures.
His work evokes the spiritual as well as the physical power of various species concentrating imaginatively on the ram and the horse, two animals significantly relating culturally for Koreans to their ancient Mongolian origins. Often monumental in their scale these animal figures with their penetrating gazes (especially in the horned rams powerful heads) and strong bodily structures (in the case of the horses) can mesmerize the viewer and establish a presence which might unsettle even the most casual observer as to their ancestral nature.
Shin Sanghošs dreams of Africa vitalize his monumental creations which invariably exude strength, boldness and a very primordial "frisson". Strength and boldness are qualities of Korean art in general, I believe, and Shin exemplifies them not only in the various animal forms his sculptures take but also in his very daring bolt from ingrained tradition.
His longing for freedom took him way beyond the borders of his native Korea and inspired his quest for a rawer more primal sense of nature. Thus, his "Dream of Africa" series of works express a strong sense of power derived from imaginative animal ancestors. His most monumental guardian-like figures, in their totemic scale and silence stare down at us as if we were indeed their owns progeny, warning us perhaps of possible ecological disasters should we forget our basic animal nature or those characteristics we share in common with various other species on earth. In their very strangeness lies their potency to make us question our own significance as human beings, perhaps, and mankindšs earliest primitive or symbolic worship of animals as gods.
Shin's equestrian figures are equally dynamic as their subject's frozen movements and inherent speed is abstractly suggested by the multiple structural legs supporting their horse-like bodies, long extended necks and faceless heads.
As for so many European artists earlier in the last century, Africa and African tribal art has provided a spring board for Shin for creating newly energized contemporary forms which extort the mysteriously ancient and a modern spirit at the same time.
Shin Sangho audaciously sought freedom from confining tradition in the primordial and the living nature so abundantly visible still in Africa. With the stirring inspiration his experience on that magnetic continent provided, Shin Sangho has produced a magnificent body of work, redolent with the spiritual sources he so fortunately digested and brought to a renewed life in powerfully intriguing and vibrantly glazed ceramic sculptures.
-Ronald Andrew Kuchta
This exhibition is made possible through the generosity of the Edward R. Roberts Family Foundation, and Johnson Family Foundation.
Saturday, July 10th 5-7 p.m. reception for the artist
on view through September 12th
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