Graduated of the School of Fine Arts in Yeungnam University, Moon-Pil Shim was born on 1958 in Daegu, South Korea. He lives and works in Yvelines near Paris.

Moon-Pil Shim has developed a style that is based on a fine layering of planes and alternating linearity and uniform coloured fields, interstices and spaces. Within boxes that are 5–6 centimetres thick, he invites us to look beyond the surface, an open window towards a distant and recessed space that displays a veiled painting. The artist alternates between transparency, clearness and solid areas of colour on transparent or translucent plexiglass, in a kind of psychedelic dance that resembles optical art.

Fine lines or narrow bands, which are either spaced out or extremely close together, streak and gradate the purity and perfection of coloured sections, adding rhythm to these monochromatic patches. The lines are drawn directly in the colour with a cutter, using a precise gesture, then coloured a second time with a Rotring drawing tool. The overall effect is balanced, bright and harmonious and, through the spaces, we are able to glimpse the various planes and the milky or coloured presence of the barely perceptible background. The reflection of the colour attracts our gaze to this distant recessed space. The artist has opted for duality, the in-between, a kind of duplication.

There is nothing abyssal between the smooth surface and the format of the piece, but rather a layering, an intersection of distinct ideas. Similarly, shadow and daylight, transparency and opacity, the inside and the outside, reality and non-reality: two facets, two sides of a single piece that poses an eternal question. He occasionally changes the orientation of his pieces and shifts them, disrupting this well-constructed balance and making the way we perceive them more complex. The mystery is maintained between lines and colours and we wonder about the back of what we can see, the other side of what is visible. Moon-Pil Shim invites us to take part in another world, to be more flexible with our gaze and to look through things, in-depth, beyond what can be seen. He suggests a non-reality, yet makes it tangible, regardless of how mute it may be.

Elisabeth Martin, Art Critic