〈Begegnung mit den Anderen / Encountering the Others〉 — International Group Exhibition, University of Kassel, 1992

His work explores the essence of traditional Korean beauty through the rediscovery of traditional images and sensibilities. These ideas began to take shape around the mid-1980s. As assistant art director (under chief director Lee Man-ik, a Western-style painter) for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1988 Seoul Olympics, Shin collected an extensive body of folk material and was able to study deeply the formal qualities and content of traditional Korean artifacts.

Programs such as 〈The Procession of Drums〉, 〈Chaos〉, and 〈The Departing Boat〉—which he either conceived or participated in—were grounded in neunghaengdo (royal procession painting) and indigenous folk games. The props deployed were drawn from folk materials: ceremonial flags, cheongsachorong lanterns, and the like. The waves of countless flags and the procession of blue-and-red lanterns left a profound impression on him.

When such individual elements gathered into a totality, the rhythm and vitality they radiated were etched deeply in his mind, and this became the foundation of his artistic world. "The flicker of light, the rhythm of color, the emotion of seeing them as one totality—this manner of drawing constitutes our native aesthetic and the very essence of our identity," he reflects. "Sensibility itself matters more than style or form, and what matters most is to reveal, with depth, the sensibility we share as a common thread."