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Don’t blink! Or Shin Lim will pull another fast one on you.
The Boston-based sleight-of-hand artist has taken his elegant, stylish card trickery to stunning heights, winning awards and accolades from fellow magicians, celebrities and fans alike. He’s stopping here with mind-reader Colin Cloud for two shows this weekend, ending his first national tour, before he heads back to Las Vegas, where he has a residency at — where else? — the Mirage Las Vegas.
His card tricks have stunned viewers, up close and personal. A two-time winner on “America’s Got Talent,” he made cards disappear, reappear and change from one card to another, even as judges Heidi Klum and Tyra Banks watched closely from beside his table, eliciting comments like “freakin’ weird” from Banks.
He’s even fooled accomplished magicians, appearing on the show “Penn & Teller: Fool Us” twice, and dumbfounding the two hosts both times.
“That was one of the best moments of my life,” he said. “They’re such legends, and when you perform in front of magicians, it’s a totally different dynamic than ‘AGT’ or just regular nonmagicians, because they know so much. When they know the secret, it makes it 10 times more difficult.”
IT WAS actually insult-added-to-injury that got Shin Lim into magic. The insults actually came from him, as he observed other magicians pulling their tricks.
“I used to be a heckler, and skeptic in magic,” he said. “I eventually became a magician. I feel like a lot of people who are skeptics and hecklers of magic end up turning into magicians, because they get so obsessed with trying to figure it out. They figure out all the tricks and then they end up practicing it because they keep looking at how do do certain tricks.”
Ironically, one of Lim’s trademarks in his current act is its relative silence, other than background music. He’ll quietly give instructions like “pick a card” or “write your name” to an audience member participating in a trick, but doesn’t tell stories or make jokes to distract the audience. He said it’s more in keeping with his personality and has helped him stand out from the pack.
“I’m actually a really shy person,” he said. “I still have a hard time talking to people in large groups. Somehow people saw this and thought, ‘Ooh, this is different,’ but in reality it was a weakness. I just didn’t want to talk because I was too shy.
“I’ve allowed the people to just focus in on the magic, which is harder on me, because I have to make my tricks so that it doesn’t rely on misdirection.”
The injury part of his story is well-known. While magic was Lim’s hobby as a teenager, his original career path was in music. He was a promising young pianist, participating in competitions beginning at age 11, and studying music in college.
He’s modest about his musical talents — “My teacher told me I was good, so I guess I was good,” he said — but a brief excerpt of thundering, impressive “Presto agitato” from Beethoven’s “Moonlight” sonata that he performed on “America’s Got Talent” suggests otherwise.
Lim was practicing piano so much that he eventually came down with carpal tunnel syndrome, a debilitating wrist injury, forcing him to rethink his life’s path and turn to to magic. After just a year, he competed in the 2012 International Federation of the Magic Societies in France, placing sixth, and launching an international career. He won the competition in 2015.
PERFORMING IN a new venue, like the Blaisdell Concert Hall, requires a lot of preparation and adjustment. Lim brings a crew of 12 people to prepare a show, which consists mostly of setting up and adjusting special lights that he brings along.
“That’s what rehearsal time is for, to make sure that I can do this trick or I can do that trick,” Lim said. “Sometimes the lights don’t cover certain areas, sometimes we have to alter things, just because of the way things are laid out.”
But isn’t it all supposed to be “magic?” Not really. Lim freely admits that what he does is trickery, but not magic.
“It looks like magic, just because of how quickly I’m moving my fingers and how quickly I’m manipulating the deck of cards,” he said. “It’s the exact same way a pianist plays the ‘Moonlight’ sonata really, really well. It sounds like magic, even though you know he’s playing the piano. The question is, ‘How is he doing that?’”
He doesn’t mind if you figure that out, and has even posted tutorials online explaining his tricks. He doesn’t see it as revealing “trade secrets” so much as sharing his skills and inviting others to give it a try.
“I see my act as a skill-based art form, so in that case I’m not worried about it.” Lim said.
“If someone is skeptical, they’re allowed to see how it’s done. Eventually, they appreciate it, because they see that ‘wow, this is not that easy.’”
Lim has fond feelings for Hawaii. With his shows in Vegas (no, he’s “absolutely not” allowed to play the poker tables there), he gets to meet a lot of Hawaii residents. He and his wife Casey got married on Maui last summer, and during that visit he found many kindred spirits here.
“We saw a lot of magicians in Honolulu, and I was thoroughly surprised and excited,” he said. “I saw them out on the street, or they would come up and say hi to me, because they knew who I am. I figured I should do a show.”
“SHIN LIM: LIMITLESS”
With Colin Cloud
>> Where: Blaisdell Concert Hall
>> When: 6:30 p.m today and Friday
>> Cost: $75-$85
>> Info: 800-745-3000, ticketmaster.com
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