Reception with the Artist: Friday, Nov. 13, 4 - 9 pm
Lucid Yellow New Work by Jiha Moon
Laney Contemporary is pleased to present Lucid Yellow, an exciting exhibition of paintings and ceramics by internationally-celebrated, Atlanta-based artist, Jiha Moon, whose work is now represented by the gallery. Lucid Yellow, a color name conceived by the artist, is bold, full of saturation and infused with cultural symbolism. Art historical references range from the wavy-haired blonde, Pop Art brushstrokes of Roy Lichtenstein to the golden coif of Warhol’s Marilyn to the exoticized, glowing locks of Renaissance goddesses. Colors have shifting references. Bold intensities of color, with a focus on yellow, wind and wander throughout Moon’s work. Yellow is at once the punk, rainbow hair dye of a teenager and also the historically-loaded notion of racial stereotyping within the U.S. of Asian identity. Her work embraces the idea that identity can be mutable at times like hair color; one is not necessarily born with a consistent sense of identity. Her work encourages dialogue and multi-valenced meaning. Intentionally playful, it moves with ease between new and ancient, political and cultural.
Moon’s paintings shimmer with luminous, acrylic brushwork on brown, Korean Hanji paper mounted on canvas or panel. This generates associations with the patina of antique books and the cultural tradition of works on paper. The meeting point between old and new is an essential part of Moon’s practice. Her signature evil eyes, milagros, iconic emojis, and corporate logos, like the Twitter bird, intermingle within each composition.
Lucid Yellow also features an installation of Moon’s wall-mounted masks and a large selection of her ceramic sculptures, earthenware and porcelain, often incorporating found objects. Blending high and low, energetic graphics and calligraphic linework form dynamic tensions between shape and surface. The cherry-red lips of a smiling mouth, not unlike the mouth at the center of a de Kooning Woman, are prominent in the recent ceramic compositions, adding to the brilliance of her shape-shifting and mischievous variations.
Reception Details: Our reception will be held on Friday, November 13th from 4 to 9 pm. A food truck will be on-premises with plenty of room on the lawn and within the gallery to maintain social distancing. Face masks are required for entry and numbers will be closely monitored for those viewing the exhibition.
Gallery hours and contact information:
Tuesday - Friday, 11-5 pm
Saturday, 11-2 pm and by appointment
Phone: (912) 438-4442
Email: info@laneycontemporary.com
Address: 1810 Mills B. Lane Blvd, Savannah, GA 31405
The work of Jiha Moon and Stephanie H. Shih is both aesthetic and political, a commentary on assimilation as a process in which one’s national origin is not forgotten or erased.
by John Yau June 27, 2020
Something I noticed after the country went into quarantine was that people began to post pictures on their social media platforms of the foods they were making at home. For a while, many people baked sourdough loaves. I saw lots of ethnic food as well as views of elaborate meals, even though no one was coming to dinner.
I also noticed that little attention was paid in the photos to the plates and platters on which the food was served. It got me thinking: The vessel is integral to the history of ceramics. When we think of food, we might not care what delivers it to the table, but when we think of ceramics, we might wish that no food or beverage ever dirtied it.
Until the 1950s, ceramics was a genre connected primarily with function, and rarely accepted as fine art. Peter Voulkos is widely considered the first ceramic artist to break down the barrier separating the functional with the purely aesthetic object. Voulkos’s breakthrough, which has been well documented, took place during the 1950s, and culminated in his 1959 exhibition of huge ceramic sculptures at the Landau Gallery in Los Angeles.
Voulkos was invited to teach at the Los Angeles County Art Institute (now Otis College of Art and Design) in 1954. He remained there until his controversial Landau Gallery show, at which point he took a teaching position at UC Berkeley. Voulkos’s students at Otis included John Mason and Ken Price, both of whom gained a reputation for their ceramic sculptures. Robert Arneson, who was not Voulkos’s student, was nonetheless changed by his encounter with the latter’s work.
This thoughtfully curated exhibition is evidence that much compelling and adventurous art is indeed being produced all around the country. by Gregory Volk March 7, 2020
BENTONVILLE, Arkansas — A follow up to the 2014-15 survey show State of the Art, State of the Art 2020 at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and its new non-collecting sister site, the Momentary, is intended to be “a cross-section of artists working today.”
Organized by Momentary and Crystal Bridges curator Lauren Haynes, with Crystal Bridges associate curators Alejo Benedetti and Allison Glenn, it includes 61 artists whose works span painting, sculpture, photography, performance, video, digital media, textiles, and ceramics. It is similar in scale, intent, and ambition to, say, the Whitney Biennial. That’s where things get interesting. For all its equity and diversity, the last Whitney Biennial still focused squarely on East and West Coast artists, especially those from New York and Los Angeles (John Yau provided a helpful by-the-numbers analysis).
Crystal Bridges begins the new decade with the opening of the Momentary, a new space for contemporary visual and performing arts, and the debut of State of the Art 2020 at both locations with free admissions. Lauren Haynes, curator of visual arts at the Momentary and curator of contemporary art at Crystal Bridges, is leading State of the Art 2020, along with Alejo Benedetti, associate curator of contemporary art, Crystal Bridges and Allison Glenn, associate curator of contemporary art, Crystal Bridges. The team visited studios across the country, resulting in the selection of a diverse group of 61 artists, from varied backgrounds and at different points in their careers.
What is striking about Jiha Moon’s work is that it does not quite fit into the New York art world’s current concerns with racial and ethnic identity because, as far as I can tell, this art world has never addressed issues of Asian cultural dislocation.
by John Yau January 11, 2020
Big Lipsearthenware, underglaze, glaze
12.5 x 12 x 7.5 inches
2019
I first met Jiha Moon in 2000 when she was a graduate student in the MFA program in fine art at the University of Iowa. Although she seldom shows in New York, I have tried to keep up with her career. In 2012, Moon was awarded a working artist’s grant from the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, which she used to sign up at a local clay studio in Atlanta and create imaginative, nonfunctional, vessel-like forms that humorously combine aspects of Western and Eastern culture. In 2014, she showed a group of these at Ryan Lee Gallery, but she has not shown in New York since. This is why I was interested in the exhibition Jiha Moon: Enigmatics at the Project Room of Derek Eller gallery (January 4 – February 2, 2020). Moon, who was born in Daegu, South Korea in 1973, came to America after she had received a BFA and MFA in Korea in the late 1990s. She was in her mid-20s when she moved to America, where she has lived and worked for the past 20 years. I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that her life could be divided into two distinct periods. It is possible for someone born in another country to move to the US and, culturally speaking, become American. But it becomes harder as each year passes, as more and more of your birth country, culture, and language become part of you; you share collective experience with others of your generation. You don’t get to start over when you relocate to a new country with a different language, culture, and customs, even though that is exactly what you must do.
