In dialogue with the 61st Venice Biennale, Shim Moonseup: Nature Sculpts unfolds at Ca’Faccanon (calle delle Acque, 30124 Venezia VE), the historic former post-office building near the Rialto Bridge, from 9 May to 22 November 2026. The exhibition traces the artist’s sculptural continuum through twenty eight works—painting, sculpture, and installation—drawn from his major series. Each piece marks a decisive moment within more than five decades of practice, from his debut at the 1973 Paris Biennale to new works completed in 2025.
Shim Moonseup has achieved international recognition through over thirty solo exhibitions in leading cities worldwide. Emerging from the late-1960s Korean Avant-Garde (AG) movement, he advanced the radical notion of “anti-sculpture,” a concept that resonated with contemporaneous currents such as Mono-ha, Arte Povera, and Land Art. As the first Korean artist invited to exhibit in Paris’s Jardin du Palais-Royal, Shim presented his works alongside Daniel Buren and Niki de Saint Phalle, imprinting Korean contemporary sculpture upon the global consciousness.
Throughout the 1970s he participated in the Paris Biennale three times in succession, later extending his presence to the São Paulo Biennale (1975), Sydney Biennale (1976), and Venice Biennale (1995, 2001). His artistic stature was further affirmed by the Excellence Prize at the 2nd Henry Moore Grand Prize Exhibition (Japan, 1981). In 2007, the French Republic recognized his lifelong contribution with the Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Shim’s trajectory demonstrates how an artistic language grounded in Eastern philosophical contemplation can expand into a universal aesthetic discourse. Over time, his creative axis has shifted from the anthropocentric to the eco-centric, relocating the source of art from human agency to nature itself. The artist perceives within the prima materia—earth, stone, wood, light, and water—a latent current of prima energeia, the formative energy that animates all matter.
In Korea, Shim Moonseup is primarily known as a sculptor; yet in recent years abroad, he has become more widely regarded as a painter.
However, from a young age he worked not only in three-dimensional forms, but across painting, photo-drawing, photography, sculpture, and installation—experiencing and employing an expansive range of material vocabularies and expressive methodologies.
His works may now be provisionally grouped into eight broad thematic fields, which will be introduced briefly in the sections that follow.