Shin Cheol 신철

Shin Cheol is a Korean painter whose work carries the emotional residue of someone who has left a place they once loved. His paintings ask how such time is remembered by those who have moved on — certain periods of life, he suggests, remain a lifelong longing for some, and the memory of a time that held stories never fully told takes on new and varied faces as the years pass. His canvases are populated by recurring figures — flushed cheeks, a girl with an ambiguous, searching expression, and lyrical, springtime scenery — that together trace the memory of a first love never quite realized. Revisiting, at the age when lines first appear at the corners of the eyes, the purest period of his life, Shin reaches back toward a first love that can never be forgotten.

He studied in the Department of Fine Arts at Wonkwang University and completed graduate studies at Hongik University. Over a career of 53 solo exhibitions, his work has been shown at venues including the Yangpyeong County Art Museum, the Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, and Lotte Department Store Daejeon, and he has served as a judge and steering committee member for the Korea National Art Exhibition. He is also the author of two books, Nostalgia (2018) and The Age of Purity (2014). At Beaux-Arts Gallery Cheongdam, he held the solo exhibition That Was You, Spring* (그대는, 봄) in May 2023, and his work was included in the gallery's 2023 group exhibitions *Contemporary Prints 101: An Introduction to My Collection and The Remarkable.