Hyung-Sub Shin’s solo exhibition, Mechanical Baroque, presents a series of mechanical apparatuses that traverse the boundaries between two pairs of mediums: sculpture and moving image, and lighting and cinema. Utilizing assemblages of lenses, light bulbs, motors, turntables, and shadow puppets, the artist shifts the focus of the exhibition away from the “playback” of images and toward the very conditions that allow an image to “emerge.”
In this exhibition, the moving image is not merely a projected result on a screen; it is an “event” generated within the physical relationship between light and machinery. Each apparatus occupies the space as a sculpture while simultaneously functioning as a projection device that produces cinematic time and motion. Through this process, sculpture transcends its fixed form to become a moving image, and the moving image expands beyond virtual representation into a sculptural entity possessing structure and weight.
Furthermore, Mechanical Baroque addresses the fusion of lighting and cinema as a central inquiry. Light does not serve as a secondary effect applied to an object; instead, it functions as a primary subject that creates narrative, rhythm, and duration. The “screening” is not a repetition of pre-edited footage, but an ongoing, present-tense process that constantly evolves through the subtle friction between the exhibition environment and the mechanical devices.
Through these excessive structures and overlapping movements, the artist reveals a time and space that folds and unfolds like Baroque pleats. As an experiment into “pre-cinematic cinema” and “post-sculptural sculpture,” Mechanical Baroque re-examines the very mode of image production within the contemporary media landscape.
