17.06 – 24.08.2025
A retrospective exhibition
In 2025, under the dual keyword “women and abstraction”, the Lee Ungno Art Museum presents, through this exhibition, the artistic universe of Shin Jung Deok (born in 1949).
This artist’s career, spanning over forty years, reflects a relentless quest to answer a fundamental question: how can we express life? His work thus transcends the boundaries of matter, space, and time, while maintaining abstraction as its central axis. It presents itself as the trace of a constant meditation on the nature of life.
A major turning point in his practice occurred around 2000. While his early works emphasized the properties of matter and explored the primordial force of life, his work from the 2000s reveals a shift toward deconstructing and recomposing natural phenomena according to his own visual language. This singular abstraction can be described as organic abstraction, as opposed to the more rigid geometric abstraction. It shares a particular affinity with the biomorphic abstraction of Arshile Gorky (1904–1948), which draws its forms from natural motifs. Also known as biomorphic art, this artistic approach is inspired by the irregular and spontaneous forms of the natural world, such as flowers, trees, and the human body. By appropriating these realistic figures as motifs, Shin Jung Deok opens a new avenue for the organic beauty of abstraction.
