The South Korean artist Bongchull Shin works in the medium of glass, in two parallel ways. With the first of these, he creates wall inscriptions conceived in a purely conceptual vein. The medium is essential here – sharp shards of broken glass – placed in deliberate contrast with the content of the messages, mostly relating to love or beauty (e.g. To Love And To Be Loved). The second line is closer to the traditional art of glass-making as well as geometric abstraction or concrete art. Bongchull Shin develops a fixed formal framework which nevertheless allows for a multitude of variations. This is based on glass elements placed in more or less orderly compositions in front of a white surface, whether a gallery wall or a plain perpendicular panel. These elements – small cubes and square stones – are not homogeneous, but made up of layers of thick panes of pure glass separated by sheets of color (apart from cubes and ashlars he also makes use of narrow strips of glass arranged in serial fashion, but the principle remains similar). From a frontal perspective the forms appear almost colorless, with the color visible only from the side, with its degree of intensity depending on the angle. The shadows cast by these objects are also tinted, thanks to the ingenuous lighting. It is the rhythmic interplay of a multitude of colored shadows projected upon the white panel and combined with the forms of the objects that creates fascinating optical structures, ever-changing as the viewer moves about, as well as with the shift in lighting.
