Atlanta-based, South Korean-born artist Jiha Moon’s paintings look like contained explosions, the world blown to smithereens. There’s the suggestive tang of gunpowder in the air and billowing smoke seems to dissipate as we contemplate her manic miasmas of color and form.
But look closely at Moon’s works painted on glossy Mylar, and all is not destruction and chaos. Instead there are folk tales and familiar apparitions emerging from the fog: beasts and sprites, dragons and fish, twisting trees and peeping eyeballs watching us as we watch them.
"Jiha Moon is in a perpetual state of “other” as she mines numerous histories and cultures, distilling them into rascally works of art. There is no filter, just a quirky mix matching flurry of references. Mischievousness, rebelliousness, Jiha is the Bart Simpson of our scene and she perfectly exemplifies the new Atlanta.” - Daniel Fuller, Curator, Atlanta Contemporary Art Center
Featuring over 50 works by multi-media artist Jiha Moon (Korean, Born 1973), this publication examines the rich cultural context in which the artist works. Based in Atlanta, Georgia, Moon harvests cultural elements native to Korea, Japan, and China and then unites them with Western elements to investigate the multi-faceted nature of our current global identity as influenced by popular culture, technology, racial perceptions, and folklore. Moon blurs the lines between Western and Eastern identified iconography such as the characters from the online game Angry Birds and smart phone Emojis. They float alongside Asian tigers, Aztec warriors, and Indian gods in compositions that appear both familiar and foreign, ancient and modern.
Binding: hardcover Length: 96 pages
Dimensions: 11" x 7"
MARCH 11 – JULY 24, 2016
KEMPER MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI
Convene
MARCH 15 – MAY 22, 2016
NERMAN MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, OVERLAND PARK, KANSAS
In 2016 we’re trying to make sense of our monuments. Broken monuments, unfaithful monuments. Bloated monuments, impaired monuments. Monuments erasing centuries of history, strangely self-satisfying Facebook monuments flashing solidarity with victims of some far-off tragedy. On May 10, 2016, Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance (INR) announced the removal and relocation of nearly 500 Soviet monuments. Debates continue to flare across the southern United States over the elimination of Confederate flags and statues like the life-size one of a staunch confederate soldier in the Mason-Dixon border city of Rockville, Maryland.
