CRITIQUE OF THE WEEK #7

Jean Shin

Seams (Gold Dress) 

fabric (cut clothing), dimensions variable, 2003

Contemporary fiber artists working in alternative media are creating some of the most vibrant and challenging works in today's art world. Such artists—working outside the boundaries of traditional fine art assumptions—are uniquely positioned to re-explore, renew, and rediscover the expressive power and possibilities inherent in visual arrangement.

Jean Shin presents her own discoveries and revelations in Seams (Gold Dress). She challenges us to reconsider what drawing is and what it can do by generating linear movements in unexpected ways. She combines Dada's liberating embrace of found objects and chance occurrence with Post-Modernism's penchant to recontextualize by reducing a gold dress to its seam components, subjecting it to the serendipitous influence of gravity, and utilizing its linear qualities to produce a dynamic fiber drawing.

Shin uses the abstract language of line an eloquent way. She takes full advantage of line's ability to meander through space and cross over itself to create shape. You can see this throughout the arrangement where lines cross to create a dominant loop-shaped motif. This repetition alone helps to unify the design, while variations in the character of the loop (bigger versus smaller, fatter versus thinner, or cropped versus fully intact) create the requisite variety.  

   figure 1                       

The arrangement of these shapes establishes the true expressive quality of the design. Across the top of the composition, the loops are arranged in horizontal sequence to create a powerful and unifying rhythm (figure 1). These loops, varying from rounded to almost wedge-like, lead the viewer on a journey through a series of steps from left to right. This strong, compressed, and dominant rhythm is supported with a secondary rhythm of elongated shapes below it (figure 2). This series of shapes—more languid and relaxed in feeling—completes this satisfying visual experience.

figure 2

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Seams (Gold Dress) has powerful narrative connotations. The artist chooses to work with fiber in the form of a dress. By coaxing this non-precious fiber object into a fine art role, Shin joins others in breaking down limited and often artificial distinctions between art and craft, and between the masculine and feminine domain.

Steven Aimone

author of DESIGN! A Lively Guide to Design Basics for Artists and Craftspeople (Lark Books, 2004)

  Click here to find out about a Shape-Making Workshop in Aimone's private studio

in Asheville,North Carolina, May 20-22

The Critique of the Week written in conjunction with Katherine Duncan Aimone

author of The Fiberarts Book of Wearable Art

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ABOUT THE ARTIST

Jean Shin ( born in Seoul , Korea ) is a New York based artist who uses cast-off materials and donated garments to create elaborate accumulated sculptures and socially relevant installations.  Her sculptural installations have been widely exhibited in museums and cultural institutions in the USA and abroad including the Museum of Modern Art , New Museum of Contemporary Art, The Brooklyn Museum, among others.  She is the recipient of numerous awards, such as the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Art Award (2001), a New York Foundation of the Arts Fellowship in Sculpture (2003) and most recently, an artist in residence at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia .   Her works have been featured in Art in America , New York Times, Tema Celeste, Time Out, among others.  In 2004 she had a solo show at Frederieke Taylor Gallery in New York City .  This spring, her installations will be on view at Galerie Eric Dupont in Paris and Sculpture Center 's exhibition, “Make it Now: New Sculpture in New York .”

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Our sincere thanks to:

Frederieke Taylor Gallery

535 west 22 street 6th floor

new york, NY 10011

for furnishing the artist's bio, and for granting us permission to reproduce this image.

For more information

about this or other works by Jean Shin,

please visit Frederieke Taylor gallery on the web at:

http://www.FrederiekeTaylorGallery.com/index.html