Jin Sook Shinde Profile   |    Summary In Jin Sook Shinde's studio, a Chinese grinding stone meant for powdering natural colours sits on the ground, swaddled in silence. However, distance plays tricks with our vision. When we move closer, we realise that its lid has two dragons with interlocking heads carved on it. Interestingly, an artist's tools often provide a clue to her aesthetic choices. In Jin Sook's case, the twofold meaning embedded in the image of the dragons... Read More In Jin Sook Shinde's studio, a Chinese grinding stone meant for powdering natural colours sits on the ground, swaddled in silence. However, distance plays tricks with our vision. When we move closer, we realise that its lid has two dragons with interlocking heads carved on it. Interestingly, an artist's tools often provide a clue to her aesthetic choices. In Jin Sook's case, the twofold meaning embedded in the image of the dragons points to the unresolved binaries of life that characterise her work. In the artist's words, she is constantly searching for "the infinite in the finite, movement in immobility, and darkness in light." This conceptual explanation of her work, when taken in conjunction with what we know of her concern with nature, may lead us to conclude that she paints abstract landscapes. But we realise how far this speculation is from the truth when we observe her method of painting. Jin Sook cuts up the painted sheet of paper into strips and rearranges these onto another sheet, which is then sandwiched between two acrylic planes. This act of redesigning the universe reminds us of traditional Chinese landscape painting, in which nature is rarefied, pared down to its basic elements. This precisely is the function of all good landscape art - be it traditional or contemporary - that of repatterning and not merely transcribing the elements of nature. As the artist observes, "While at the art college in Seoul, I learnt to recognise the irregularities of life and art." As a student, she once playfully put a glossy sheet of paper in a tub of enamel oil mixed with water. The enamel oil swirled on the surface, creating a marbled pattern. This pattern was born of a whim, of course, but it provoked the artist into experimenting in her own medium by stimulating, in a deliberate way, the 'accidental' character of natural elements. These decisions emerge from a particular academic history. While studying art in South Korea, her mother country, Jin Sook soon realized that her affinity was neither with traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy, nor with the modern western art practices. She assiduously imbibed the techniques of both traditional and contemporary art-making. She also seems to have meditated on the principle of formal repetition, which is used in traditional crafts like weaving. In her own work, she uses this principle to create an experience of rhythm, while also transforming its formal function to provide variations in tone. Jin Sook extends the metaphor of all things pure and natural by using earth-friendly tools and paints. She grinds the Chinese stone colours with water. In the same vein, she has rejected the standard frame of the canvas dictated by Western convention, she does not believe in clean edges. Instead, she has chosen to make the jagged ends of her painted strips function as their own irregular frame. Here, we are reminded of the words of the Taoist master, Lao Tzu (in D.C. Lau's translation): The great square has no corners. The great vessel takes long to complete; The great note is rarefied in sound... The Taoist images of elegant simplification of forms in space are reflected in the formal economy of Jin Sook's work. She employs the deceptively simple line as her tool of expression. Her patterning of the painted linear strips also expresses her need to process nature. By cutting the sheet into strips, she shares the dilemma of the contemporary artist who cannot view the landscape as a harmonious whole. Even as she replicates the unreliable temperament of nature in her work, she feels the need to reformulate the landscape in terms of a new order. Speaking of nature, the artist returns to Korea, recalling her trek through the mountains to reach the Buddhist shrines almost concealed by the verdant forest. Even as a child she was fascinated by India, the land of Buddha's birthplace. Perhaps that is why her decision to leave Korea and settle down in India with her husband, the artist Vilas Shinde, did not seem like a major uprooting from her home country. Interestingly, she met Vilas in Paris while studying graphics under the famed print-maker S. W. Hayter in the early 1980s. Indian architecture and the warm colours of the Indian landscape enchanted Jin Sook. For a long time now, she has worked with the horizontal positioning of the strips in her work. The linearity of the strips is broken by the splash of stippled red rain or the disappearing black marks left in the sky by the flight of a bird. IN recent works, she has shifted the strips to a vertical position, adjusting the viewer's vision in such a way that the eye experiences the feeling of a fall from a height. This work is inspire by the terrain of the picturesque hill station of Matheran. All the elements of nature act and react on the viewer's mind like brief Zen notations. In her recent work, Jin Sook has decided to let the strips breathe freely. Rather than paste them flatly on the paper, she makes them stand on their sides so as to create a sense of dimension and volume. She plays a bewitching game with the viewer's line of sight. When we look at the works in a conventional manner, that is frontally, all we see is a blur of black and some residual colour. It's only when we shift our position to the left of the frame that we see a shimmer o twilight colours breaking into flesh pink, burning orange, and spectral blue. These colours play tricks with the eye, they reveal themselves and disappear in a a rainbow against a fence of diagonal shadows. Jin Sook's works are not simply abstract variations on a landscape. Her recent work proves, rather, that she has begun to experiment with sculptures composed from paper, light, colour, and shadow. With these works, Jin Sook has moved beyond the boundaries of conventional abstraction, extending its plastic and expressive possibilities. Read Less Born April 2, 1952   South Korea Education 2000 Worked at Glasgow Print Studio in UK 1980-83 Studied Printmaking at Atelier 17 under Prof. S. W. Hayter in Paris 1976 Bachelor of Fine Arts, Hong IK College of Art in Seoul, South Korea Exhibitions Selected Solo Exhibitions 1999 Gallery Chemould, Mumbai.... Selected Solo Exhibitions 1999 Gallery Chemould, Mumbai. 1996 Gallery Chemould and Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai. 1993 Gallery Chemould and Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai. 1990 Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai. Selected Group Exhibitions 2008 ‘Freedom 2008 : Sixty Years After Indian Independence’, Centre for International Modern Art (CIMA), Kolkata 2006 ‘The Art Edge’, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi 2006 ‘Spandan’, Gallery Articullate, Mumbai 2006 ‘An Expression in Black and White’, Tao Art Gallery, Mumbai 2004 ‘Subtlety Minimally’, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi 2004 ‘Celebration of Women by Women Artists’, Indira Gandhi Centre for Art and Culture, New Delhi 2004 Omani Society for Fine Arts - Muscat Sultanate of Oman organized by National Gallery of Modern Art (N.G.M.A.), Mumbai 2003 Art for Hears Sake - A Charity Auction of Indian Art conducted by Bowrings 2003 Auction of Indian modern & Contemporary paintings curated by Neville Tuli 2003 ‘Kal Aaj Aur Kal’, organized by Gallery Chemould, Mumbai 2002 ‘Homage to Picasso’, Guild Art Gallery, Mumbai 2002 ‘The Golden Jubilee Exhibition by Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai 2002 Concern India Foundation - Painting Umbrellas and Ganesha Watercolors, Mumbai 2001 ‘Tradition and Modernity’, Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Kolkata. 2001 Gujarat Earthquake Relief Exhibition, National Gallery of Modern Art (N.G.M.A.), Mumbai 2000 ‘India in Summer’, Glasgow Print Studio Gallery, U.K. 1999 ‘The End of the Century Show’, Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai. 1998 Wilberding Collection of Contemporary Indian Art at National Gallery of Modern Art(N.G.M.A.), Mumbai 1997 Tribute to India 50 Years of Independence at National Gallery of Modem Art(N.G.M.A.),, New Delhi and Mumbai 1996 ‘Cinemascape’, Lakeeren Gallery, Mumbai. 1995 ‘Trends in Contemporary Indian Art’, Art Heritage Gallery. New Delhi. 1994 Maltwood Art Museum and Gallery, Canada. 1994 Daya's Collection, Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai. 1992 International Show of Communication Art, South Korea. 1992 ‘Imprints On Our Time’, Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai. 1990 XAL PRAXIS Foundation's, Graphic Exhibition, Cymroza Art Gallery, Mumbai. 1989 Centenary Invitees Ghow, Bombay Art Society, Mumbai. 1988 Art for Cry, Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore. 1987 Yoon Gallery, Seoul, South Korea. 1987 Shir-Shin OaHary, Daejeon, South Korea. 1987 West Zone Cultural Centre, Udaipur. 1987 Galaxy of Graphics Exhibition, Gallery Chemould, Mumbai. 1985 Maharashtra State Art Exhibition, Mumbai. 1985 Exhibition of Indian Print Making Today-85 in India and Europe. 1984 Bombay Arts Society, Mumbai. 1983 Salon Des Beaux-Arts, Paris. 1982 FIAP, Paris. 1981 Committee D' enterprise, Paris. Joint Exhibitions 2007 With Deepak Shinde at Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai 2003 With Deepak Shinde at Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai 1996 With Deepak Shinde at Prithvi Gallery, Mumbai 1990 With Deepak Shinde at Shridharani Art Gallery, New Delhi 1987 With Deepak Shinde at Yoon Gallery, South Korea and Shin-Shin Art Gallery, Deajon, South Korea 1986,87 With Deepak Shinde at Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai 1984 With Deepak Shinde at Jehangir Art Gallery and Taj Art Gallery, Mumbai Participations 2010 'Master’s Corner', organized by Indian Contemporary Art Journal at Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai; India International Art Fair, New Delhi 2010 'Contemporary Printmaking In India', presented by Priyasri Art Gallery, Mumbai at Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai; Priyasri Art Gallery, Mumbai 2010 'Evolve: 10th Anniversary Show', Tao Art Gallery, Mumbai 2006 Singapore Art Festival, organized by Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi 2001 10th Triennale- lndia, New Delhi. 1998 The 1st Seoul Arts Festival for Overseas Koreans, Seoul. 1996 Sixth Painting Biennial, Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal. 1991 2nd Daejeon '91 Triennale, South Korea. 1988 Bhopal International Graphics Biennial. 1987 1st Daejeon 1987 Youth Triennale, South Korea. 1986 India Festival of Prints in U.S.A. 1984 International Graphics Biennale, Taiwan. Honours and Awards 2000 Selected for 10th Triennale, India 1997 Selected for Seoul Arts Festival for Overseas Artist. 1986 D. G. Nadkarni Art Critic Prize. 1985 Maharashtra State Art Purchase. 1984 Bombay Arts Society Award, Mumbai 2000 Selected for 10th Triennale, India 1997 Selected for Seoul Arts Festival for Overseas Artist. 1986 D. G. Nadkarni Art Critic Prize. 1985 Maharashtra State Art Purchase. 1984 Bombay Arts Society Award, Mumbai Read More Read Less Read Less
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