“Kim Jiha” (1984) is a painting created in homage to the poet Kim Jiha who endured brutal persecution by the authoritarian Yushin regime (1972-1979). In 1970, Kim Jiha published a poem titled “Five Thieves” in Sasanggye magazine, a literary work that criticized the corruption and decay engendered by the cozy relationship between politicians and the chaebol, large conglomerates in South Korea. Due to the poem’s publication, Kim was incarcerated on charges of violating the Anti-Communist Act. In 1974, Kim was also accused of orchestrating the alleged attempt by the National Youth Association for Democracy to overthrow the government, and
consequently was sentenced to death. From that point on, Kim spent most of his time behind bars until 1980, enduring a repetitive cycle of imprisonment, torture, and temporary release. In this piece, Kim is lying in a fetal position on the floor of a solitary, windowless cell, his body still bleeding. By depicting the poet in this way, Shin was also raising criticism against the military regime that had used force in attempting to repress a young man protesting against injustice. This also parallels the political situation of his own times when Shin produced the painting. The work is nothing short of a statement of resistance to the military
dictatorship that seized power through a coup.
Shin Hak-chul (b. 1943) graduated from the Department of Painting at Hongik University in 1968. He has held several solo exhibitions including “Shin Hak-Chul: Invitational Exhibition” at Seoul Museum in 1982; “The Great Statue We Have Created” at ARKO Art Center in 2003; and “Emerging Artist: Shin Hak-Chul” at Gimhae Arts and Sports Center in 2014. He has participated in group exhibitions including “AG” at National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea, currently MMCA from 1970 to 1975; “Controversial Artists” at Seoul Museum from 1981 to 1984; “The Art of Life” at Arab Culture Center/Gwanhoon Gallery/The Third Museum in 1984; “Anti-Torture” at Geurimmadang Min in 1987; “Reunification” and “Dear Gwangju! Dear May!” at Geurimmadang Min in 1989; “15 Years of Minjung Art: 1980-1994” at National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea, currently MMCA, in 1994; “The 1980’s Realism and the Age” at Gana Art Center in 2001; “You Are My Sunshine” at Total Museum of Contemporary Art in 2004; “Korean Rhapsody: A Montage of History and Memory” at Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art in 2011; “Humans, Humans ？ The Pictorial History of Ordinary People by Shin Hak-Chul and Ahn Chang- Hong” at Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art in 2013; and “Regrettable Times” at Seoul Museum of Art in 2018. He is the recipient of the 1st Korean People’s Arts Award in 1991 and the 16th Kumho Art Award in 1999.
Shin Hak-chul is one of the artists who led the socio-political art movement called Minjung Art in 1980s South Korea. He started his career as an artist in the late 1960s, actively embracing Western avant-garde art. He used collage techniques to portray the materialist threat toward everyday life under the mass consumption society of industrialized Korea in the mid-1970s and began to focus on the material properties of objects in the context of modernist art in the late 1970s. Later, in the early 1980s, Shin released the “Modern orean History” series, comprised of 23 works in total, in which he interpreted and recreated the modern and contemporary history of Korea through his unique imagination. This series encompasses the independence movements during the Japanese colonial period, liberation, the Korean War and the division of the Korean Peninsula, and Korea’s post-war socio-political history. Entering the 1990s, Shin focused on the lives of the ordinary people such as farmers and laborers, and in the 2000s, he portrayed the diverse aspects of Korean society and its growing disorder in the 21st century through the “History of Contemporary Korea: “Gapsuni and Gapdori” series.
