Andakulova’s Gallery is delighted to present a new exhibition of Nikolay Shin’s paintings on the walls of the gallery. The opening event will be held on 20th of October 2019, and the exposition will be available until the 20th of February 2019. Nikolay Shin’s artworks carry the themes of history, culture, and, of course, his own experience. Only while being in the exhibition hall, may one acknowledge the greatness of his artworks.
From the point of view of Nikolai Shin, his painting demonstrates the influence of Eastern ideography, a genetically inherited respect for artistic harmony, calm Buddhism and a sense of belonging to the “Mediterranean” art.
Nikolay Shin is an abstract artist and romantic. Due to its vivid imagery, the abstract painting of the artist evokes in consciousness a complex series of associations. His paintings live with symbols, color, shape, rich imagination of the artist. They are decorative and lean towards monumental painting.
Over 20 years, Shin devoted work on two pictorial cycles – “The Legend of Love” and “Requiem. The Road of Memory ”, in which various versions of the theme of the tragic collision of the individual with despotic power are presented. “The Legend of Love” (consisting of more than 100 works), which reveals the material of classical poetry of the East.
Nikolai Shin born in 1928 in Dalnegorsk, Primorsky Krai, Soviet Union – passed away August 18, 2006 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan was an Uzbekistani painter of Korean descent. Shin’s childhood was difficult due to the passing of his father. He, with his sister, was moved to his grandmother. In 1937, he and his family were deported to Central Asia along with all other ethnic Koreans in the Russian Far East. After the deportations, his family stayed in the Kazakh SSR for a few years before eventually settling in Tashkent, Uzbek SSR (now Uzbekistan) in 1940. Sometimes he was referred to by Korean newspapers as the “Picasso of Asia”. In 1949, Shin graduated from Tashkent’s Benkov Art School, and began his career in painting, first receiving acclaim for his work in 1957, when he won the grand prize at the International Youth Festival in Moscow and the second prize in the Republican Festival of Young Artists of Uzbekistan. In 1960, he graduated from Atropsky Art College, also in Tashkent; after his graduation, he began work on his painting Requiem, which would take him until 1982 to complete. Requiem, painted on a canvas three metres tall and forty-four metres wide in primary colors.
Shin began to become well known in the West with his solo exhibition in Moscow in 1990, and another in Tashkent in 1991. Eventually, his art attracted the attention of the Central Asian-American Enterprise Fund, who offered him financial support, enabling him to hold further exhibitions. His work was also recognized by the Korean government in 1997, when they awarded him with the Order of Culture Merit.
In 2001, Shin’s life story was made into a documentary film Sky-Blue Hometown, directed by Kim So-young. Kim stated that she was inspired to tell Shin’s story after seeing Requiem displayed at the National Museum of Contemporary Art and reading articles in the domestic press about Koreans in Uzbekistan. After completing the film, she was disappointed by the initial lack of domestic interest; though it won grand prize at the Seoul International Documentary and Film Festival and was honored as the best Korean documentary at the Pusan International Film Festival, local distributors remained uninterested in the film. Sky-Blue Hometown would go on to be invited to several international film festivals in 2001, including the Asian American International Film Festival in New York, the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival in Japan, the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, and the International Festival of Audio-visual Programs in Paris.In November of the following year, it won the Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema prize at the Taiwan International Documentary Festival. However, it was not shown in cinemas in Korea until 2003.
Andakulova’s Gallery
Location: Dubai, DIFC, Damac Park Towers, Unit 18/P4, +971 4 3859897
