Shin KwangHo

Shin KwangHo is an artist from South Korea. He studied art at Keimyung University. He has recently become known in the art world for huge portrait paintings of people depicted in colorful and abstract style. He was featured in the list of "One to Watch" by the Saatchi online gallery.

Shin KwangHo's paintings are full of quiet longing and uncertainty. They depict subjects which maintain grace even as they bleed with intense colors. The brushstrokes and layers of paint almost conceal the faces and facial features of the characters represented. There is a particular focus on the subjects' eyes, and the style allows viewers to project their own faces, or perhaps the faces of people they know, onto them. There is a dark emotional quality to his works reflecting the darkness, pain, and anguish of the world we exist in.

According to Myung-Jin You, curator, complexity of human emotions is left as momentary traces on the empty space, after a long agony of the artist’s inner side. The complexity results from completely absorbing and assimilating with the artworks by the artist while holding the brush in a brief, and from the moment that the colors arrive on the screen, involving the formation of shape, eradicating of the fear of blank space, and his inner side’s fear and the ecstasy from the fear. "This moment is the process that the artist takes out something from his inside, and also is the climax of the energy that he creates the pieces."

According to Bark Jeongsu, "Figure and personality are different. Person means somebody who thinks and is engaged in a social activity, while figure is a subject who is just seen from a certain angle. His work becomes a person though it seems to aim at a figure. He completes a common person with a specific figure. It becomes a self-portrait of every people including himself who are engaged in social activity... An artist inspires an object, that is happening now or familiar with, with a special spirit. Especially when you see a figure painting, you are accustomed to how much like it is compared to the figure. In this respect, SHIN KWANGHO's figure painting does not depict an accustomed figure around. Nevertheless it is familiar. His painting is understandable with the eyes well depicted. Eyes are the window to look in a person and the mirror of the world... It is not the transformation from a person to no person, but from a specific to an ordinary person. He himself is flown into it. It is the method to include his own artistic experience and value... Persons, which are represented by Shin KwangHo, are close to a landscape with people appearing rather than a figure painting..."