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 his large portrait paintings depicting the subjects in a 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 that 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 in empty space as the artist undergoes long agony. The complexity results from completely absorbing and assimilating by the artist while holding the brush in a brief, and from the moment 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, Shin's works appear to aim at depiction of a figure although they depict a personality, which is essentially different from the figure. He constructs a self-portrait of every people including himself by depicting a common person with a specific figure engaged in social activity. Since a figure painting is usually compared to the original figure, Shin's figure painting does not depict an accustomed figure, but 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... represented by Shin KwangHo... are close to a landscape with people appearing rather than a figure painting..."