Bio

Jeena Shin is a Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland-based artist who graduated with an MFA from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in 2000. Her work is held in the collections of Te Papa Tongarewa and the Chartwell Collection at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. Shin has also been commissioned for a number of major site-specific works by institutions including Artspace Aotearoa, the Adam Art Gallery (both 2009), the Dunedin Public Art Gallery (2011) and the Herald Theatre at the Aotea Centre in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, which includes her wall work at scale titled Motus. Te Papa Tongarewa commissioned her large-scale in situ work Movement Image Time in 2018.

Movement Image Time A (2017) sits in direct connection with her Te Papa installation and presents as a cinematic still from the cluster of fluttering and overlapping crystalline structures that inform many of her architectural collaborations. Her work on canvas is a more sensuous affair – subtle shifts of pigment weight, density and sheen articulate the ‘winged’ forms as they dance over the picture plane, creating an effect described as ‘vibrant gentleness’.

In 2014 Shin was selected for the C Art Trust Award by then senior curator at the Dowse Art Museum Emma Bugden, who described Shin’s programme eloquently. ‘Jeena Shin is a painter of exquisite subtlety … If Jeena’s work makes you think of origami, it is not surprising. To create her paintings, no matter how large and complex, the artist starts by simply folding a piece of paper to create a series of layered shapes … The delicacy and precision of the paper folds are reflected by the painted tessellations that evoke contoured forms.’

Abstraction is frequently divided into two camps, summarising polar opposites: the gestural – the home of the free-wheeling expressionist – at one end and the tightly controlled, grid-based geometric rationalist at the other. Shin’s interplay of chance and order brings both impulses to bear within a monochromatic environment that only just controls the drama.

Exhibitions

• 2022   Two Rooms, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland: Time-Delay
• 2021   Artspace Aotearoa, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland: When the Dust Settles
• 2019   Two Rooms, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland: Time Slice
• 2017   Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, Ngāmotu New Plymouth: Surface Effect: Amanda Grunewald, Jeena Shin, Michael Zavros
• 2016   The Dowse Art Museum, Te Awa Kairangi ki Tai Lower Hutt: Movement: Andrew Barber and Jeena Shin
• 2015   Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki: Necessary Distraction: A Painting Show