JungWon Shin
JungWon Shin is a Seoul-based visual artist whose practice spans painting, installation, and digital media. Her work explores the threshold between the real and the imagined, inviting viewers to step into immersive dreamscapes she calls the “Innerverse.” Through exhibitions such as Dreams Come True (2023) and Universe Energy (2024), Shin transforms fragments of daily life into portals of emotion, reflection, and connection. Beyond the gallery, her digital projects and public art initiatives extend her vision of openness—making art a shared, living experience that transcends boundaries.
Innerverse: The Art of Openness
By Sfumato
To step into JungWon Shin’s world is to step into a space where imagination breathes freely. Her paintings shimmer like thresholds—neither fully real nor entirely dream—inviting us to linger in the in-between. For Shin, painting is not a destination but a departure point. From the first brushstroke, she opens a door into what she calls the Innerverse: an intimate landscape of memory, feeling, and transformation. In Innerverse, Shin continues her pursuit of openness—a concept that threads through all her work. Each canvas is both surface and portal, a passage into immersive installations and digital reflections that invite viewers to move, pose, and play. Visitors become part of the composition, blurring the boundaries between artist and audience. For Shin, art is never complete in solitude; it comes alive through participation, through the gaze, gesture, and presence of others.
Her imagery is at once familiar and transcendent: the quiet glimmer of dew, a car beneath moonlight, the stillness of an abandoned tricycle. These moments of everyday beauty become sites of wonder—reminders that mystery lives not elsewhere but within our ordinary lives.
Beyond the studio, Shin’s practice extends into public and digital spaces. As the Lead Artist for a mural project with the Seoul District Office, she infused city architecture with color and narrative. Through her four YouTube channels, followed by over 30,000 subscribers, she creates contemplative visual essays and painting journeys that open art to anyone with curiosity. Her digital presence mirrors her philosophy: that creativity is a form of generosity, a shared field where barriers dissolve.
At its heart, Shin’s work is a gesture of invitation. It asks us to pause, to rediscover beauty in small details, and to reconnect with ourselves and others. Whether through a luminous canvas, a quiet online meditation, or a mural unfolding across a city wall, her art reminds us that openness is not only an artistic practice—it is a way of living.
