Hong Gyu Shin is not your typical gallerist. A prodigy of observation, he began scouting masterpieces at thirteen years old. For over a decade, Shin Gallery has served as a Manhattan landmark - a creative ecosystem where the boundaries between eras, styles, and disciplines dissolve.
Shin does not select an artwork to be observed, he selects it for its power to activate a primal response. The collaboration between L-Y-O-N and Shin is a four-handed dialogue. During the 2026 Met Gala weekend, L-Y-O-N enters Shin’s private vault. Here, our White Canvas becomes the physical medium for the collector’s deepest obsessions.
We curate iconic fragments of creative history - from Congo’s primal abstraction to Oscar Wilde’s handwritten edits - tracing the journey from the essence of genius to the most visceral human impulse. You are no longer just looking at history; you are wearing the eye of the collector.
The Collector's Eye, Translated. Five artists. Five centuries of creative impulse. From Congo’s abstraction to Van Gogh’s Nuenen darkness; from Richard Hambleton’s shadow figures to Oscar Wilde’s corrections and Sam Francis’s hidden color fields. Each piece is drawn directly from Shin’s private collection.
100 numbered pieces per work. Printed, not reproduced - each garment carries the weight of the original. Signed by the collector. When the last piece is sold, the canvas is closed. Forever.
Not an artist in the traditional sense - and precisely for that reason, he fully is. A chimpanzee whose works were collected by Picasso, Miró, and Prince Philip. 400 works in a few years. An autonomous visual language, instinctive yet structured.
As Dalí said: "The hand of the chimpanzee is quasi-human; the hand of Jackson Pollock is totally animal."
Instinct comes first.
Nuenen, 1885. Before the light. Before the color. The artist the world knows does not yet exist, yet everything that would make him eternal is already there.
A rare work. Van Gogh before Van Gogh.
Before Basquiat, before Haring - there was Hambleton. Dark figures painted on Manhattan walls in the dead of night. Uninvited, unsigned, unforgettable.
'Opening' (c. 1983) captures the New York East Village scene at its rawest, when the street was the only canvas that mattered.
A fragment of a city that no longer exists.
Not a tribute. A document. Two original pages from the 1890 publication of The Picture of Dorian Gray, annotated and corrected by Wilde's own hand. The printed word crossed out. The better word written above it.
A rare fragment suspended between the published word and literary legend.
A curtain of dark pigment covers the surface. Beneath it, a vibrant color field refuses to disappear. 'Black (Deepened Black)' (1950) was painted during Francis's Paris years, when a hospital ceiling was his only canvas.
What you see is what survives underneath.
Stay tuned, more creation to come…
© 2026 L-Y-O-N·
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