CROWN, 2015
Metal chains
10 ft h x 24 ft w x 16 ft d
Installation in the Olson Gallery
Bethel University, MN
Jean Shin: Crown
Thick and thin, rusty and untarnished, industrial and decorative, hundreds of metal chains in the installation Crown dangle in a dense weave of interconnected threads. In their mass, the strands create the shape of a crown, each of the suspended sections poised like a finial on a tiara. Collecting donations of chains, the Bethel University community adapted the work to fit the architecture of the Olson Gallery, spanning the four existing columns. The multitude of chains interconnect seemingly incompatible elements of life: the corroded and the newly minted, leisure and labor, luxury and misfortune. Such are the uses and fates of these links of metal, always mixed in their connotations. As in this work, we move from crown to chain, and back again.