The Sentence Thrown Into The Light: Paintings Turn Into Illuminations.
빛으로 던져진 문장: 회화는 조명이 된다: 정희라
Edited by Hee Ra, Jung
번역: 김미혜
Translated by Mihye Kim
Artificial lightings on the street remain as fragments that brighten the dark. The paintings of Joon-min Shin capture these fragments of a split second and translate what the light says into the language of paintings. In the sentences of this language, layered time, vibrating sensations and lingering memories are floating about as white affects. Shin induces people to be immersed in his works of illuminated paintings just as real lightings do. This is by a way of eliminating visual narratives while producing sensual conditions. In this exhibition, he presents his own illuminated paintings through a juxtaposition of two areas: illuminating and being illuminated. The former consists of his paintings of artificial lights found in cities; the latter, his drawings of illuminated objects and their after-images. The present writer regards Shin’s works—painting both light and objects—as paintings turned into illuminations. Through these artworks, which integrate the ambivalent aspects and characteristics of light, this writer would explore which thoughts on sensations they convey.
신준민, Spotlight_2025, Oil on canvas, 230 x 724cm
Light has long been used as a metaphor to reveal the truth. In ancient philosophy, the sun represented the revelation of Ideas. In medieval art, it was embodied in the monstrance, revealing the presence of God. In this context, it is considered that the illuminating light is a subject of perception and control while the illuminated object is a passive object laid under the gaze of the subject. However, contemporary visual culture, affect theory and art criticism dismantle this dichotomy between subject and object, or illumination and the illuminated. Paying attention on this point, artist Shin experiments with the relationship between light and its objects.
What lies within the inside of his light? Through his works since 2013, Shin has depicted sceneries of a zoo, a playground, a stadium and a promenade, all transformed into audiovisual waves. His early paintings of a zoo presented the sceneries from an observer’s viewpoint and they were more like a figurative painting. Later, his work shifted to the perspective of a promenader, placing light at the center by binding ambivalent elements found in the society or in the daily lives into a harmonious order within the frame. He had presented light within these scenes in his exhibitions such as <겨울잠>, <Everywhere>, <Night Flight>, <Adventure> and <빛이 지나간 자리>. After them, in his exhibition <New Light>, he experimented with paintings that function as sources of light. And finally, in his exhibitions <White Shadow> and <White Out>, he brought white light to the forefront of the frame. Looking into his working procedures, he layers colors from the RGB spectrum onto the canvas, just like generating the real light, and finally gets to find a perfect balance among colors. In this experiment, the artist not only depicts light as an object, but also allows the whole painting to function as a source of illumination. Unlike natural light, artificial light can be created or extinguished at an autonomous control by the artist. As an artist in front of the artificial light, his artistic attitude and mentality evolve depending on its placement and context. He has continuously studied on contemporary artificial media, paintings as material, and overlapping of non-material. And it has enabled the light within the frame to embrace the interactions of what is looked and what is not between the figurative and the abstract.
Through this process, Joon-min Shin has transformed his own light into figurative paintings of sensation or abstract paintings of perception. Just like the conceptual installation artist Dan Flavin, who works with artificial light and organized spaces using neon lightings, or James Turrell, who shaped environments through phototropism, Shin designs affective lighting structures with paintings—by painting artificial illuminations within the canvas. Thus, his paintings transcend traditional descriptive forms and compel us to rethink fundamentally about the way the light engages with the subject. His illumination paintings can be seen as a contemporary response to take such art historical context back into paintings.
In front of his paintings, spectators experience not the shape of an event, but the sensations after an event. At this point, our attention is going to the lightings of a baseball stadium—the motif Joon-min Shin has chosen. A baseball stadium is an institutional space where actions and rules or gaze and excitement are combined. And the lightings are visual settings to control its structure. However, the lightings, not turned off even after the game, are out of their institutional function. They now highlight the stoppage and absence of the event at the place. Excessive lightings beyond necessity, embracing silence and tranquility rather than the moment of cheer for victory, block the senses. These lightings unlock the status that only the residual sensations are within the already finished narratives and disappeared structures. The lightings blur the distinction between reality and fantasy and transcend sensory temporality, creating a mythical atmosphere.
These functions of lighting are visualized in his work through the erasure of scenes and the density of affect. Brian Massumi’s concept of affect—that is physical response that precedes feeling, a vibration of undifferentiated sensation—definitely works in front of Shin’s paintings. The illuminations do not reveal the scene but rather remove it, and even maximize the pressure of affect on what has been removed. In works such as <Flood Lighting> and <빛 숲>, Shin transforms these lightings–––which are basically sparkling lights at fireworks shows, or light of streetlights or spotlights–––into abstract masses of color. And he makes them felt more like void spaces of sensation than simply the light.
The artist’s frames are filled with white-outs to materialize light. His paintings, being the light themselves, sometimes lead the spectators into a sensory experience. In this instance, the paintings become windows as well as light sources. These white-outs function as lightings—illuminating the inside of the frame, while simultaneously illuminating the space out of the frame, and even our inner sensations, such as of gaze or body. Once we were the viewers seeing under them but switch to the illuminated ones; the observer is reversed into the observed.
2025 올해의 청년작가 'LightWalk' 전시전경
신준민, 조명나무_2025, Oil on canvas, 230 x 160cm
When looking directly at light, our vision goes dim. Shin’s radiant light, deliberately resisting to be a clear shape, finally dissolves both the subject and the object. The audience faces the residual floating colors fallen off the collapsed power structure of sight. This kind of perception exists as a sense flowing through the relations, no more as any linear perception or object-oriented thinking. The light does not work to illuminate something outside anymore; it functions as energy to bring out inner senses. The object also does not reveal from outside anymore; it is condensed and vibrates within the senses.
However, on his canvas are the traces left, still not wiped off around the light; for example, after-images of structure, the grid of illumination, and outlines of space. This enlightens the fact that inside of light has not been completely gone, and that there is still a lingering object on the spot erased by the light. At the same time, his works such as <구름 나무> and <잔상 연구> show the restoration of forms again. Joon-min Shin did not put away visible and figurative things and he evokes the vitality of light through them. The daytime illuminations are no longer the light of silence and blank expression. They bloom like a bunch of flowers and they grow like a tree. The nighttime light, after grieving the disappeared events, becomes the daytime light to return to the growing life again. The illuminations of Joon-min Shin are tools for perceiving the irreversible, and places where surviving sensations bloom anew. In this way, his frames become illuminations. And beneath these illuminations, we begin to sense anew.
2025 올해의 청년작가 'LightWalk' 전시전경
신준민, 푸른 밤_2025, Oil on canvas, 230 x 411cm
신준민, 빛 숲_2025, Oil on canvas_230 x 300cm
2025.10. ACK 발행. ACK (artcritickorea) 글의 저작권은 필자에게 있습니다. October. 2025. Published by ACK. The copyright of the article published by ACK is owned by its author.
The Sentence Thrown Into The Light: Paintings Turn Into Illuminations.
빛으로 던져진 문장: 회화는 조명이 된다: 정희라
Edited by Hee Ra, Jung
번역: 김미혜
Translated by Mihye Kim
Artificial lightings on the street remain as fragments that brighten the dark. The paintings of Joon-min Shin capture these fragments of a split second and translate what the light says into the language of paintings. In the sentences of this language, layered time, vibrating sensations and lingering memories are floating about as white affects. Shin induces people to be immersed in his works of illuminated paintings just as real lightings do. This is by a way of eliminating visual narratives while producing sensual conditions. In this exhibition, he presents his own illuminated paintings through a juxtaposition of two areas: illuminating and being illuminated. The former consists of his paintings of artificial lights found in cities; the latter, his drawings of illuminated objects and their after-images. The present writer regards Shin’s works—painting both light and objects—as paintings turned into illuminations. Through these artworks, which integrate the ambivalent aspects and characteristics of light, this writer would explore which thoughts on sensations they convey.
신준민, Spotlight_2025, Oil on canvas, 230 x 724cm
Light has long been used as a metaphor to reveal the truth. In ancient philosophy, the sun represented the revelation of Ideas. In medieval art, it was embodied in the monstrance, revealing the presence of God. In this context, it is considered that the illuminating light is a subject of perception and control while the illuminated object is a passive object laid under the gaze of the subject. However, contemporary visual culture, affect theory and art criticism dismantle this dichotomy between subject and object, or illumination and the illuminated. Paying attention on this point, artist Shin experiments with the relationship between light and its objects.
What lies within the inside of his light? Through his works since 2013, Shin has depicted sceneries of a zoo, a playground, a stadium and a promenade, all transformed into audiovisual waves. His early paintings of a zoo presented the sceneries from an observer’s viewpoint and they were more like a figurative painting. Later, his work shifted to the perspective of a promenader, placing light at the center by binding ambivalent elements found in the society or in the daily lives into a harmonious order within the frame. He had presented light within these scenes in his exhibitions such as <겨울잠>, <Everywhere>, <Night Flight>, <Adventure> and <빛이 지나간 자리>. After them, in his exhibition <New Light>, he experimented with paintings that function as sources of light. And finally, in his exhibitions <White Shadow> and <White Out>, he brought white light to the forefront of the frame. Looking into his working procedures, he layers colors from the RGB spectrum onto the canvas, just like generating the real light, and finally gets to find a perfect balance among colors. In this experiment, the artist not only depicts light as an object, but also allows the whole painting to function as a source of illumination. Unlike natural light, artificial light can be created or extinguished at an autonomous control by the artist. As an artist in front of the artificial light, his artistic attitude and mentality evolve depending on its placement and context. He has continuously studied on contemporary artificial media, paintings as material, and overlapping of non-material. And it has enabled the light within the frame to embrace the interactions of what is looked and what is not between the figurative and the abstract.
Through this process, Joon-min Shin has transformed his own light into figurative paintings of sensation or abstract paintings of perception. Just like the conceptual installation artist Dan Flavin, who works with artificial light and organized spaces using neon lightings, or James Turrell, who shaped environments through phototropism, Shin designs affective lighting structures with paintings—by painting artificial illuminations within the canvas. Thus, his paintings transcend traditional descriptive forms and compel us to rethink fundamentally about the way the light engages with the subject. His illumination paintings can be seen as a contemporary response to take such art historical context back into paintings.
In front of his paintings, spectators experience not the shape of an event, but the sensations after an event. At this point, our attention is going to the lightings of a baseball stadium—the motif Joon-min Shin has chosen. A baseball stadium is an institutional space where actions and rules or gaze and excitement are combined. And the lightings are visual settings to control its structure. However, the lightings, not turned off even after the game, are out of their institutional function. They now highlight the stoppage and absence of the event at the place. Excessive lightings beyond necessity, embracing silence and tranquility rather than the moment of cheer for victory, block the senses. These lightings unlock the status that only the residual sensations are within the already finished narratives and disappeared structures. The lightings blur the distinction between reality and fantasy and transcend sensory temporality, creating a mythical atmosphere.
These functions of lighting are visualized in his work through the erasure of scenes and the density of affect. Brian Massumi’s concept of affect—that is physical response that precedes feeling, a vibration of undifferentiated sensation—definitely works in front of Shin’s paintings. The illuminations do not reveal the scene but rather remove it, and even maximize the pressure of affect on what has been removed. In works such as <Flood Lighting> and <빛 숲>, Shin transforms these lightings–––which are basically sparkling lights at fireworks shows, or light of streetlights or spotlights–––into abstract masses of color. And he makes them felt more like void spaces of sensation than simply the light.
The artist’s frames are filled with white-outs to materialize light. His paintings, being the light themselves, sometimes lead the spectators into a sensory experience. In this instance, the paintings become windows as well as light sources. These white-outs function as lightings—illuminating the inside of the frame, while simultaneously illuminating the space out of the frame, and even our inner sensations, such as of gaze or body. Once we were the viewers seeing under them but switch to the illuminated ones; the observer is reversed into the observed.
2025 올해의 청년작가 'LightWalk' 전시전경
신준민, 조명나무_2025, Oil on canvas, 230 x 160cm
When looking directly at light, our vision goes dim. Shin’s radiant light, deliberately resisting to be a clear shape, finally dissolves both the subject and the object. The audience faces the residual floating colors fallen off the collapsed power structure of sight. This kind of perception exists as a sense flowing through the relations, no more as any linear perception or object-oriented thinking. The light does not work to illuminate something outside anymore; it functions as energy to bring out inner senses. The object also does not reveal from outside anymore; it is condensed and vibrates within the senses.
However, on his canvas are the traces left, still not wiped off around the light; for example, after-images of structure, the grid of illumination, and outlines of space. This enlightens the fact that inside of light has not been completely gone, and that there is still a lingering object on the spot erased by the light. At the same time, his works such as <구름 나무> and <잔상 연구> show the restoration of forms again. Joon-min Shin did not put away visible and figurative things and he evokes the vitality of light through them. The daytime illuminations are no longer the light of silence and blank expression. They bloom like a bunch of flowers and they grow like a tree. The nighttime light, after grieving the disappeared events, becomes the daytime light to return to the growing life again. The illuminations of Joon-min Shin are tools for perceiving the irreversible, and places where surviving sensations bloom anew. In this way, his frames become illuminations. And beneath these illuminations, we begin to sense anew.
2025 올해의 청년작가 'LightWalk' 전시전경
신준민, 푸른 밤_2025, Oil on canvas, 230 x 411cm
신준민, 빛 숲_2025, Oil on canvas_230 x 300cm
2025.10. ACK 발행. ACK (artcritickorea) 글의 저작권은 필자에게 있습니다. October. 2025. Published by ACK. The copyright of the article published by ACK is owned by its author.