Shin Sung Hy Monograph Book Launch | Sarangbang: A Solution to Continuity

Celebrating the release of Shin Sung Hy: Beyond the Painted Plane by Rizzoli International Publications, Gallery Hyundai presents a book launch and gathering around the late artist Shin Sung Hy’s (b. Ansan, Korea, 1948) legacy. Moderated by curator Sophia Park, this program will be modeled after Shin’s Parisian sarangbang (사랑방, guest room) that he hosted with his family, offering a space for the Korean emigré artist community based in or passing through Paris from the 1980s until his passing in 2009. Park will lead a collective reading of excerpts from Shin’s monograph followed by a conversation and zine-making session in the spirit of the sarangbang to further engage with his work. Reflections will run parallel to and thereby act as a nod to Shin’s nouage series, which is his signature three-dimensional “knotted paintings” that he developed from 1997 through 2009. In what ways can individuals disentagle and knot back together experiences and images from their own lives? How can one engage with Shin’s oeuvre and life in meaningful ways that they can carry with them into the everyday?

Shin Sung Hy: Beyond the Painted Plane, a comprehensive volume of 240 pages charting various phases of his practice from postwar abstraction in Korea to his own sculptural methodology that matured in Paris, features critical essays by critic and art historian Yeon Shim Chung, professor of Art History and Theory at Hongik University in Seoul, and Maël Bellec, Chief Curator at Musée Cernuschi. Limited copies of the monograph will be available for purchase exclusively at Gallery Hyundai New York.

About the artist:
Throughout his career, Shin Sung Hy (1948–2009) enlivened various material qualities of the essential ingredients of painting—canvas, support, and paint—in pursuit of ontological questions regarding illusion and representation, two- and three-dimensionality, and the artist’s own body. Shin Sung Hy’s practice can be categorized into four distinct periods: the “monochrome hyper-realistic painting” series, jute paintings (1974–1982), “collaged paperwork” series, collage (1983–1992), “sewn-canvas” series, couturage (1993–1997), and “knotted-canvas” series, nouage (1997–2009). His works reside in the permanent collections of UNESCO, Paris; National Foundation for Contemporary Art, Paris; National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Gwacheon; Seoul Museum of Art; Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art; Busan Museum of Art; Whanki Museum, Seoul; and Ho-Am Art Museum, Gyeonggi. Currently, Shin’s major solo exhibition Shin Sung Hy: Coller, Couturer, Nouer is on view at Musée Cernuschi in Paris through August 2, 2026.

About the moderator:
Sophia Park is a writer and curator living in Brooklyn, New York and Seoul, South Korea. Recently, she worked as a curator for the Fifteenth Gwangju Biennale; she currently works as the managing editor for the upcoming Sixteenth Gwangju Biennale. She has participated in curatorial projects and programs with AHL Foundation (New York, U.S.), Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons (Utrecht, Netherlands), GYOPO (Los Angeles, U.S.), 2022 Singapore Biennale (Singapore), Asian American Arts Alliance (New York, U.S.), and others. Her writing can be found in publications such as Monument Lab’s Bulletin, The Amp, Asymptote Journal, Womanly Mag, Inciter Art, and others. She is part of the curatorial collaboration slow cook with Caroline Taylor Shehan and takes care of gummi reading, a mobile reading and study space. She holds a B.A. in Neuroscience from Oberlin College and an M.A. in Curatorial Practice from the School of Visual Arts.