〈To the Other Shore〉 — Artist Note and Choi Tae-man Review (2014)

That yonder shore may be the "Arirang pass," may be "Mt. Geumgang," may be "samādhi — the completion, the highest, the supreme attainment of practice," may be my interpretation and practice (行) of "pāramitā (波羅蜜)."

From this shore to that yonder shore ......

From this world of suffering to that yonder world without suffering, from the actual shore (此岸) of reality to the yonder shore (彼岸) of the ideal — the "Arirang of hope."

— Shin Jang-sik

Once Shin Jang-sik said of himself, "My fifties in life are those of a wayfaring practitioner (a wanderer on the path)." For my part, I do not think he defined himself as a religious practitioner in the strict sense. This can be confirmed in his own words: "I have come to think that the way of the artist is also the way of the practitioner, and that painting too is an instrument of practice. What was I looking for, wandering East and West, past and present? If I can express even a little of that light, that would be good. I want to sing 'the Arirang of hope' in painting." The practitioner he speaks of is, in another phrasing, "one who is searching for a way."

As he wished to be a wayfaring practitioner, Shin Jang-sik loves to travel. For him, travel is not merely a time of pause to escape the chains of daily life and to recharge, nor a reward bestowed upon a hard-working self. He is one who searches for something, and when the object appears, he sets out on the road in order to remain absorbed in it.

It was the same when he painted Mt. Geumgang before tours to it had opened. He collected, surveyed, and studied an abundance of materials related to Mt. Geumgang and reconstructed it on the surface. After the opening of Mt. Geumgang, that same passion, through countless field surveys, was also the driving force that made him "the Mt. Geumgang painter."

Excessive passion can become attachment, but his painting of Buddhist statues must also have been driven by some kind of vow-force (wonryeok). What might it be? He is not, drawn by religious faith, painting the Buddha as an object of worship. Perhaps he has taken Buddhist statues as a "means" not for the statue itself but in order to know the identity of the deep thought that dwells within them.

From Arirang to Mt. Geumgang to the Buddhist statues, there is no conflict or opposition in Shin Jang-sik's paintings. What he is searching for, as he himself has said, is "the Arirang of hope." Is not art such a thing? Searching for a light that cannot be declared in clear terms but rises faintly into view.

— Choi Tae-man / art critic