Harnessed From Nature

Opens Friday, May 8 The exhibition traces the artist’s sculptural continuum through twenty eight works—painting, sculpture, and installation—drawn from his major series. Each piece marks a decisive moment within more than five decades of practice, from his debut at the 1973 Paris Biennale to new works completed in 2025. Shim Moon-Seup has achieved international recognition through over thirty solo exhibitions in leading cities worldwide. Emerging from the late-1960s Korean Avant-Garde (AG)movement, he advanced the radical notion of“anti-sculpture,” a concept that resonated with contemporaneous currents such as Mono-ha, Arte Povera, and Land Art. As the first Korean artist invited to exhibit in Paris’s Jardin du Palais-Royal, Shim presented his works alongside Daniel Buren and Niki de Saint Phalle, imprinting Korean contemporary sculpture upon the global consciousness. Throughout the 1970s he participated in the Paris Biennale three times in succession, later extending his presence to the São Paulo Biennale(1975), Sydney Biennale (1976), and Venice Biennale (1995, 2001). His artistic stature was further affirmed by the Excellence Prize at the 2nd Henry Moore Grand Prize Exhibition (Japan, 1981). In 2007, the French Republic recognized his lifelong contribution with the Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Shim’s trajectory demonstrates how an artistic language grounded in Eastern philosophical contemplation can expand into a universal aesthetic discourse. Overtime, his creative axis has shifted from the anthropocentric to the eco-centric, relocating the source of art from human agency to nature itself. The artist perceives within the prima materia—earth, stone, wood, light, and water—a latent current of prima energeia, the formative energy that animates all matter. Here, nature ceases to be a passive material. It becomes an autonomous, self-generating presence. Shim positions himself notas a maker but as a condition setter, one who establishes the minimal circumstances through which nature may reveal its own formative intelligence. Hence the title does not imply that man sculpts nature but that nature sculpts. In Korea, Shim Moon-Seup is primarily known as a sculptor; yet in recent years abroad, he has become more widely regarded as a painter. However, from a young age he worked not only in three-dimensional forms, but across painting,photo-drawing, photography, sculpture, and installation—experiencing and employing an expansive range of material vocabularies and expressive methodologies. His works may now be provisionally grouped into eight broad thematic fields, which will be introduced briefly in the sections that follow. Shim Moon-Seup (b. 1943, Tongyeong, South Korea) lives and works between Tongyeong, South Korea and Paris, France. Shim is a pioneer of modern sculpture in Korea whose practice explores nature and temporality beyond fixed genres and media. He received international recognition with the Excellence Award at the 2nd Henry Moore Grand Prize Exhibition in 1981 and France’s Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Chevalier) in 2007. Known for experimental anti-sculptural works, he challenges traditional sculpture through materiality, using wood, stone, earth, and iron. The Presentation, a painting series begun in the 2000s, extends his long-standing inquiry. Inspired by the sea of Tongyeong, repetitive brushstrokes evoke cycles of creation and destruction, reflecting the temporality of matter while blurring the boundary between sculpture and painting. Curated by Sim Eunlog Organized by Shim Moon-Seup Art and Culture Foundation