Self-Portrait

The Early Years — The Artist before 1988 (1981–1987)

The year 1988 was a turning point for Shin Jang-sik. Through his work on the Seoul Olympics art production team and his first Berlin solo exhibition the following year, he was reborn with his own visual language in the 〈Arirang〉 series. These photographs show the artist before that — a young man still searching, his direction not yet set — and their meaning comes into focus when placed alongside the leap he made after 1988. The pre-1988 works gathered here are the traces of that search.