Signatures
Parloir, September 26-29, 2024
Tournai, Belgium

Ehrlich Steinberg is pleased to present Signatures, a solo presentation by LA-based artist TJ Shin for Parloir in Tournai, Belgium, taking place September 26 - 29 2024. The presentation includes a new series of sculpture, photography and drawing in which Shin considers spatial forms of time in relation to the intelligibility of images, the distribution of information and the historical significance of Cold War paranoia. Considering Belgium’s particular context as the headquarters of NATO since 1967, the series explores notions of anxiety and strategy which characterize geopolitical planning across allied and opposing nation states.

In Pocket watches (United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Hungary, Netherlands, Slovenia, Turkey, Portugal, United Kingdom), a series of thirteen pocket watches have been altered by Shin to act as pin-hole cameras with unexposed film placed inside. The work references the final scene of Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 satiric war film Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb in which a spy-camera pocket watch is shown taking a secret picture. Here, the thirteen watches represent the thirteen NATO countries the artist has visited, each set to their corresponding time zones.

The sculpture Pinholes (Belgium, United States) includes two negative film images developed by the artist from two of the pin-hole camera pocket watches projected onto miniature slide monitors. In contrast to the film within each pocket watch which sits in a permanent state of un-exposure, these images have been fully realized. As a pair, the work is suggestive of eyes, further referencing ideas of paranoia, spying and perception.

Shin’s drawing Signature/Event/Context shows a printed and hand-drawn geometric sequence on a grid. It forms a map and pattern of visual analogies—tactical formations, sound waves, binary codes and ornamental wallpaper. The drawing follows the logic of shadowgraphs that visualize the flow or disturbance in the atmosphere, including differences in shock wave, intensity and pressure, that cannot be seen by the human eye or imaged by cameras.

In this new body of work, Shin considers how the endless exchange and hoarding of information relates to and propels modes of political and state-based power. The series continues the artist’s examination of historic, visual and symbolic patterning, and the spatialization, obsessiveness and mania of the image.

émergent magazine

Pocket watches (United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Hungary, Netherlands, Slovenia, Turkey, Portugal, United Kingdom), 2024. USSR pocket watches, film, brass and acrylic display stand. Dimensions variable; 6 x 4.25 x 4.25 in. (15.2 x 10.8 x 10.8 cm) each Pinholes (Belgium, United States), 2024. Slide viewers, negative film, mounted slide. Dimensions variable; 2.75 x 3.25 x 4.75 in. (7 x 8.3 x 12 cm) each
Signature/Event/Context, 2024. Pencil and ink on Japanese paper, linen 72 x 30 in. (183 x 76 cm)