Young Shin shared their story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below.
Young, it’s always a pleasure to learn from you and your journey. Let’s start with a bit of a warmup: What do the first 90 minutes of your day look like?
Most mornings begin quietly, without hurry. I wake with the light, pour a glass of water, and step outside with my dog for a short walk—the air still soft, the day just beginning. Back home, it’s tea or coffee, sometimes a few pages of reading, sometimes just music drifting through the room. Then I head to the studio table—clearing surfaces, setting out paper and sketches for the next piece, or making finishing touches to what I had been working on. It’s a simple and loose rhythm, but it gives shape to the day before everything else takes over.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I create layered, minimal collages that explore impermanence and resilience—works shaped through folding, stripping, sanding, and sometimes burning paper to reveal what time leaves behind. My practice lives at the intersection of minimalism and atmosphere, where quiet gestures and subtle textures speak louder than noise. I think of the process as poetry in material form: building and undoing, layering, and erasing, each piece a meditation on memory, change, and transience. What makes the work distinct is the balance it holds—conceptually rigorous yet approachable, contemporary yet softened by a human touch. Across my series runs a quiet, lyrical thread that resists spectacle while remaining deeply felt. The result is abstraction that feels both thoughtful and tactile, grounded in concept yet alive with presence—art meant to resonate in the hands of collectors and within the vision of galleries who value restraint, texture, and atmosphere.
Appreciate your sharing that. Let’s talk about your life, growing up and some of topics and learnings around that. What breaks the bonds between people—and what restores them?
Human bonds often break not through one dramatic event, but in the quiet erosion of trust—when presence turns to absence, when silence becomes heavy instead of grounding. What restores them is equally subtle: honesty without sharpness, small gestures of care, and the simple act of showing up again.
If you could say one kind thing to your younger self, what would it be?
“You don’t have to rush — everything you’re looking for will find you in its own time. Until then, keep making, keep feeling, and keep turning toward the light and the good that are already here.”
I think our readers would appreciate hearing more about your values and what you think matters in life and career, etc. So our next question is along those lines. Where are smart people getting it totally wrong today?
I believe there are moments when decisions and actions must be made quickly. But too often, even when urgency is absent, we confuse speed with depth, noise with meaning—believing that constant motion or endless output will bring clarity. Yet the richest ideas tend to arrive slowly, carried by silence, by space, by time lived rather than time optimized. Clarity rarely comes through acceleration; it emerges when time is allowed to settle, until what is essential rises to the surface. And in smoothing every edge, in chasing polish and perfection—especially in haste—we risk losing the rawness that makes things—art, relationships, life itself—feel truly alive.
Okay, so before we go, let’s tackle one more area. What is the story you hope people tell about you when you’re gone?
When all is said and done, I hope I am remembered as someone who lived with a quiet clarity—one who understood that the most fleeting instants often carried the greatest weight. My work—paper folded, stripped, undone—was never just about surface or form, but about presence, impermanence, and the delicate tension between holding on and letting go.Yet beyond the work itself, I hope what lingers is the way I tried to move through the world: with a gentleness that did not diminish strength, with an elegance born of restraint, and with the conviction that beauty often enters our lives in unassuming ways—present in the smallest details, the ordinary gestures, the moments most easily overlooked.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://youngshinart.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/youngshinart/
