For Shim Hyun-Joo, the role of art is to deal with the question of the spirit and reveal the energy of the spiritual world. The power and the code of Shim’s art is in its effort to open the affirmative and negative aspects of an idea by crossing over the realm of human consciousness and the unconsciousness with a spiritual attitude taken by looking at existence.
Her video installation synthesizes images taken via closed-circuit cameras and the DVCAM recording system. Made with the technology of digital editing and a real-time play system, the work shows an open channel between steel structures within an exhibition hall. Images are recorded in real time by the CC camera flowing along the channel, and then the recorded images are turned into different secondary images on the monitors. Each monitor transforms the images by a preset program within it, a sensor, or by viewer participation, turning them into a new cityscape. The images projected on a large screen show the process of viewing actual objects from a totally different point of perspective which evoke questions of the substance of reality.
In this work, Shim Hyun-Joo does not apply materialistic imagination to the notion of circulatory, rather than linear, time according to the rule of her own making. She wants her work to function as an eye directed towards the outer world to make possible the interaction between all directions, thus ensuring viewers freely cross over between reality and the world of dreams.
