Jin Minwook (진민욱)

Boundaries, painting on silk, 90x129 cm, 2012

Boundary Between Dream and Reality (installation view), painting on silk, 118x141x4cm, 2011-2012

No information was listed for this piece on the artist's webpage,

and I don't recall the title, but it was one of my absolute favorites.

Sweet!  I think I may be the first to write about Jin Minwook in English, which means a lot of you will be seeing something new here.

After finishing up a teaching contract in Busan, South Korea, I decided to devote a week to exploring Seoul.  I went to about twenty galleries during that time, and while I discovered a lot of fantastic work there, Jin Minwook's work at Gallery Dam touched on some of my favorite themes: monsters, fauna, and psychology.

In her work, Jin focuses on the emotional struggle of the individual in the midst of a rapidly changing society.  Since the Korean War, South Korea has rapidly grown into an industrialized nation with a powerful economy and strong ties to the west.  But industrialization brings with it an obsession with wealth and individualism, not to mention isolation due to its tendency to move people from smaller communities to large urban centers where connecting with others is not generally a priority.  Korean society is still struggling to adjust to these new dynamics, and Jin's work bears witness to this through its imagery of tangled snakes and many-headed dogs struggling amongst  themselves in barren landscapes.  The human psyche behaves in much the same way -- in a social landscape devoid of interpersonal connections and support, it warps and turns against itself, leading to inner struggles in the form of mental malaise and a fractured sense of self.

Critical analysis aside, Jin's paintings on silk panels are amazing fun to look at, with their lush variations in color and hue and careful attention to textural detail.  They simultaneously recall the centuries-old tradition of silk painting in Korea and the European/North American style of zoological illustration that thrived throughout the 18th century.  I really wish her the greatest success, if only for the selfish reason that I would relish the opportunity to see her work again here in the United States!

Jin Minwook was born in Seoul in 1980, and received a BA in painting at Ewha Women's University in 2003.  She went on to receive her MFA at The China Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing in 2009.  She's currently working towards her PhD at Ewha Women's University.

Note: I realize that the images above are way too small, but these were the best I was able to find online.  I will do my best to find some high-resolution images of Jin's work in the near future.