Shim Jung-Soo (1942- ) graduated from the Department of Sculpture at the College of Fine Arts, Seoul National University in 1967 and the Graduate School of Education at Dongguk University in 1982. He held solo exhibitions including 《The 1st Solo Exhibition》 (The Korean Culture and Art Center, Seoul, 1981), 《West Coast》 (Gana Art Gallery, Seoul, 1995), 《Oh! Goguryeo》 (Insa Art Center, 2003), and 《Phantom REAL》 (Ilmin Museum of Art, Seoul, 2008). He participated in diverse group exhibitions such as 《Reality and Utterance Group Exhibition》 (Dongsanbang Gallery, Seoul, 1980), 《Contemporary Art Festival ‘85》 (National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art [MMCA], Deoksugung Palace, 1985), 《The 15 Years of Korean Minjoong Arts: 1980-1994》 (MMCA, Gwacheon, 1994), Northeastern Asia and the 3rd World Art (Seoul Museum of Art [SeMA]), Seoul, 1999), 《2006 Seoul Art Exhibition: Figurative Sculpture》 (SeMA, Seoul, 2006), 《30 Years of Reality and Utterance: Reality for the Society and Art》 (Insa Art Center, Seoul, 2010), and 《The 41st Seoul Sculptors Society》 (Kimsechoong Museum, Seoul, 2020). Shim won the New Artist Award in 1966, the Gold Award in Sculpture at the 20th Anniversary of Seoul National University Exhibition in 1967, was selected three times for the National Art Exhibition of the Republic of Korea (Gukjeon) from 1967 to 1969, and won the Ghana Art Award in 1991.
Shim Jung-Soo has shown a wide variety of diversity in his sculptural subjects, materials, and forms. While working as a member of Reality and Utterance (Hyunsil-gwa Baleun) in the 1980s, he realized that a national and independent creative art practice could only be obtained when one did not ignore present reality. He then immersed himself in exploring the essence of the Korean form, which he had been contemplating for a while. Using various materials such as wood, stone, and metal, Shim has worked on two-dimensional lines excluding three-dimensional sculptural volume and recreated the nature of Korean sculpture from folk beliefs, shamanism, and peasant lives in unique proportions and textures. Since the 1990s, Shim Jung-Soo had combined nature and environment into his sculpture, while continuing abstract work on the theme of fire until the 2000s. The essence of Shim Jung-Soo’s sculpture is to convey the beauty and vitality of nature by materializing it in its most natural state.
