Jiha is a recipient of 2011 Joan Mitchell Foundation award.
The Joan Mitchell Foundation celebrates the legacy of Joan Mitchell and expands her vision to support the aspirations and development of diverse contemporary visual artists. They work to broaden the recognition of artists and their essential contributions to communities and society.
installation & collaborative works by Rachel Hayes & Jiha Moon
ADA Gallery, Richmond, Virginia
September 17 - October 29, 2011
Opening Saturday
September 17th, 7-9pm
ADA gallery is pleased to announce new collaborative works by installation artist Rachel Hayes and painter Jiha Moon. Jiha's gestural marks and seductive imagery are painted on, and embedded in, Rachel's sculptural panels that are sewn from fabric and Korean mulberry paper. Rachel's use of shiny swatches of colorful fabric contrast nicely with Jiha's soft fuzzy brush strokes as they attempt to tame the wild beast they envision their collaboration to be. Yasu means "Beast" in Korean, therefore "Our Yasu" is a tribute to their team effort.
With separate studios in Kansas City, Brooklyn, and Atlanta, there is a great deal of negotiation and compromise necessary as they construct and deconstruct work before meeting face to face onsite to create their installations. Hayes and Moon have been working together since meeting in 2007 at the Art Omi residency in New York. Their first collaborative effort, "Outflow" was featured in the group exhibition "More Mergers & Acquisitions" curated by Stuart Horodner at The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, 2009. They followed this with a large work entitled "Chutes and Tears" at The Lab Gallery in New York last April, a grand landscape of fabric and paint which unfolded and revealed itself as one walked past the corner window gallery. This work featured the use of recycled blue jeans, which were collected, shredded, often bleached, and reassembled into curtain-like forms creating cascades and shelters. For their exhibition at ADA gallery, the team will site specifically re-install "Chutes and Tears".
Jiha has finished her recent project with The Fabric workshop and Museum and was in four person show at The Fabric workshop and museum in Philladelphia this past spring 2011. Rachel had her fellowship exhibition at Saint-Gaudens national historic site in Cornish, NH in 201o and is getting ready for her one year residency at Mary Walsh Sharpe foundtion in Brooklyn this September, 2011.
This is Jiha and Rachel's third collaborative exhibition and debut exhibition at ADA gallery as a team.
Chutes & Tears at the LAB gallery NYC, 2011
Our Yasu will feature a new installation as well as many new wall pieces.
This exhibition will run from September 17 - October 29, 2011
gallery hours: Wednesday - Saturday noon - 5pm.
for more information and images contact john pollard at info@adagallery.com
ADA gallery, 228 West Broad Street, Richmond, Virginia 23220 © COPYRIGHT ADA GALLERY 2011
Reynolds Gallery, Richmond, Virginia
September 16 - October 29, 2011
Opening Reception
Friday, September 16, 7 - 9 pm
Artist's Talk
Saturday, September 17, 1 pm
Jiha Moon, The Letter Shin, 2011, ink, acrylic, embroidery, fabric on Hanji paper, 59 x 59 inches
Jiha Moon, Swoosh, 2011, ink, acrylic, glitter on Hanji paper, 28 x 39 1/2 inches
"Less is more," blah blah blah, but for some artists even "more and more" is not enough. Jiha Moon's exhibition "Day for Night," at Rhodes College's Clough-Hanson Gallery through Oct. 14, shows an astonishing sense of controlled chaos in the 13 pieces that seem, despite an inherent trait of delicacy and fragility, about to burst from the bounds of their edges. The paradox -- delicacy and furious energy, airy patterns and elaborate mess -- permeates this work that manages to be delightful and perplexing without breaking apart at the seams.
Clough-Hanson Gallery, Rhodes College, Memphis
September 9- October 14, 2011
Download a PDF of the show brochure
Day for Night includes thirteen recent paintings by Korean-Americanartist Jiha Moon. These bold paintings present dreamy landscapes that are super-saturated with a breathtaking array of visual information. The densely composed pictures whirl and tumble like turbulent seas filled with parts culled from myriad sources and influences. The paintings create a liminal space that blurs the lines between East and West, seduction and repulsion, old and new, abstraction and representation, and spontaneity and intentionality. The dynamic paintings are at times laugh- out-loud funny or disquieting in their jarring peculiarity. The artist provides a lens through which to view a magical world where she combines disparate elements, constructing a representation of the frenetic, information-rich world in which we live.
Upon first glance Moon’s paintings can seem unruly in their over-the-top exuberance, but as the viewer’s eyes adjust, one begins to see the sweet harmony at work within the spectacular chaos. It is as if Moon is trying to make a painting using every technique imaginable. Each painting presents its own particular juxtaposition of parts. Bold, gestural brushstrokes and delicately rendered passages mix to form a no-holds-barred visual feast for the viewer. The artist engages us with her elegant balancing act as we dissect the formal layers of her paintings. In Day for Night I we find delicately rendered passages of intensely colored forms bobbing in a fog of watery underpainting. The carefully modulated, flat shapes are contrasted with mushy, gestural swaths of variegated wet-into-wet paint. Watery paint runs and drips into abraded areas, sanded down to reveal the grain of the painting surface. Subtly nuanced Hanji (handmade Korean mulberry paper) is collaged atop richly textured tapestry. While many contemporary painters filter and distill their many influences into a hybridized style, Moon maintains the specific particularities of her multivalent approach. In doing so she reveals the multivalent nature of her practice.
Further inspection proves the paintings are just as layered conceptually as they are in technique. Moon cross-pollinates and assimilates bits and pieces from a wide variety of cultures in an effort to speak to the pluralistic nature of the modern experience. Using a delightful mish-mash of sources that are at times dizzying and elegant she carefully orchestrates varying levels of visual turmoil. Brightly colored pop-images are layered with elements of traditional Asian landscape painting. Wavy tendrils rendered in a trademark Roy Lichtenstein style overlap with decorative elements borrowed from Pennsylvania Dutch Fraktur paintings. Microsoft’s Technicolor butterfly and the Twitter bluebird soar while the Grateful Dead’s tie-dyed smiley face and the head of the Botan Rice Candy dog look on from a distance. German calligraphic letters and classical Korean writing share the space with collaged paisley bandanas while reflective stickers, rubber stamps, and glitter glue pepper the compositions. All of which is held in place by some of the most exquisite, delicate brushwork found in painting today. Dozens of other familiar shapes are inches from the point of recognition. The unpredictable combination of images assures that no two viewers will experience or interpret the work the same way. By establishing a place where these disparate elements can co-exist on the same picture plane, these assemblages highlight points of cultural commonality while savoring the delicious tension created by the dramatic differences.
As I work my way through the twists and turns of Jiha Moon’s wonderful paintings I find myself stupefied and breathless. At some point early in the prolonged viewing experience I find myself doubting her ability to execute everything in one painting, a combination of skepticism and nervous anticipation―but each time I am led to the marvelous moment of synthesis. It is the very same feeling I get watching the neighborhood kids work their magic on their skateboards, flipping, twisting, teetering, and finally executing a brilliant move. Moon’s eloquent painting practice speaks to our own important task as members of modern society: to deftly maneuver the constant bombardment of visual information―from the pop-ups on the computer screens to our logo-filled public sphere. The underlying harmony within Moon’s carefully constructed chaos reflects the opposing dynamic and delicate order found in the complex human world.
Hamlett Dobbins Director
Clough-Hanson Gallery
Contemporary visual culture is the ultimate melting pot. It lumps together an assortment of images, slogans, brands and ideas that we unwittingly absorb until the blurred line between image and reality becomes the definition, not the regulator, of American identity. South Korean-born, Atlanta-based artist Jiha Moon navigates this chaotic system with a sophistication and familiarity that comes from a life spent straddling worlds. In her art it is possible to see the mirror image of everyday American life, crowded with ideas that swarm against each other with equal parts opposition and harmony.
