Kyungmi Shin was born in Busan, Korea, in 1963. She initially studied medicine in Korea. In 1983 she immigrated to the U.S., and in 1966 she started to study art, and studied painting at San Francisco Art Institute, and received her M.F.A. in sculpture and installation at the University of California at Berkeley in 1995. She has exhibited at Sonje Museum in Korea, Southern Exposure in San Francisco, Asian American Art Center in New York, and Virginia University Art Museum. She is a recipient of emerging artist Brodi grant from California Community Foundation in 2001, Individual Artist Grant from Pasadena City in 2003, and Artist in Residence Grant from City of Los Angeles in 2006 and 2007. Kyungmi Shin lives and makes art in Los Angeles, CA, U.S.A.

Selected works:

SOLO EXHIBITION

There will be a solo exhibition by Los Angeles-based artist Kyungmi Shin in the project space, concurrent with the group exhibition. She will create an installation inspired by her recent trips to the Republic of Ghana in West Africa in relationship to her experience of living in Los Angeles.

Discussion Points that comes to me thinking about Ghana/US:

• Different cultural perspectives that exists- with an awareness of each other's existence
• Leading to perception of the world- expressed in rituals- beliefs about life and death, how disease and death happens, importance on different rituals- funeral in Ghana versus wedding in the US versus birthdays in Korea.
• Happiness/ laughter/ Joy/ Satisfaction  in relation to  Poverty/ wealth
• Signifiers for wealth ( in Ghana, in Los Angeles) and poverty

Exhibition components:

Two or three video walls that incorporate “bubbles” (the bubbles are video images) that move around on the wall, referencing her approach in her still, photo-based work.

1. All videos are videos of ceremonies and rites of passage.
2. One wall will have a video from Ghana, e.g. a video of a funeral in village of beautiful dancing and music sequence.
3. Another wall will have a mix of photo and video that will be again moving video bubbles.  These will be photos and videos from Los Angeles from my family, friends and others.  
4. Floor- painted and collaged elements.

Exhibition will travel, or there will be a part two, presented at UCR Sweeney Art Gallery in summer or fall 2008.

Ongoing dialogue and research between Shin and Stallings will be presented in the form of podcasts that will appear on the 18th Street Arts Center website. Each podcast will include still and/or moving images, along with URL winks to related sites.

What drives my work is my curiosity about the visual world around me. I note, record and re-record the visual phenomena and coincidences that I encounter in my everyday life through photos and videos. These recordings in photo and video are them reassembled and reprocessed through juxtaposition with other photo(s), with object(s), painting, collage elements or with a three dimensional presence created in response to the original photo or video image.Through these exercises of observation and the reflections on the original observation, I am investigating the nature of perception, memory, and the mechanisms of visual logic. My work is innovative in that it investigates the memory in relation to photographic and videographic records. However, my working method defies the seemingly objective recording device, the camera. I am fascinated by how meaning-making is a fluid and arbitrary process, and I am interested in pushing the boundaries of logic to create works that connect to the instinct rather than linear logic.Currently I am working on mixed media installations where I use photographs and videos from Ghana, Africa and Los Angeles, USA. I am interested in the natural growth in the tropical life and in the urban setting, the kind that take over the available spaces. Good examples of these are mangrove trees and graffiti I use the photographic images along with painterly mark-making and collage elements creating 2D wall installations and objects that mimic these natural, entropic growths.