a curator's office in a micro gallery setting
now at the micro gallery
Jiha Moon: Line Tripping
Curator's Office is pleased to present another solo exhibition of Korean-born artist Jiha Moon. For this exhibition, the gallery will showcase a diverse range of Moon's works, all of which are presented on Hanji paper. A reception for the artist will take place on Saturday, September 15 from 6 - 8 pm. An exhibition brochure by John Ravenal, The Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, will accompany the show.
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Among a handful of contemporary artists hailed for challenging and extending the category of Asian American art, Moon continues to develop a dazzling lexicon of mark making, with a particular focus on the metaphoric possibilities of line and its implied sense of journey, in this second exhibition at Curator's Office.
Curator John Ravenal notes, "Jiha Moon's work is often discussed in terms of opposites brought together in a single image: East and West, tradition and innovation, representation and abstraction, spontaneity and control. And this is not inaccurate. Her work teams with the results of productive tension between contrasting forces, and she herself describes her experience of moving between diverse cultures-Korea and the United States, small town and city, the North and the South-as a primary influence on her imagery."
Further scrutiny of her "sensuous and animated paintings, however,reveals something more personal. Each of her works-ink and acrylic on Hanji paper-presents a drama of improvisation and imagination in which the primary protagonist is gesture: the gesture of a loaded brush pulled across the paper to form a thick wake of variegated hue; the gesture of multiple veils of colored ink washing over each other in successive layers, deepening the sense of space as they build atmospheric density; the gesture of fine lines surrounding and embellishing areas of flat color, teasing out their identities until these forms themselves become dynamic presences in the overall field."
Read curator John Ravenal's essay
Read The Washington City Paper review
Read the Artnet review
Moon, who received her Master of Arts from the University of Iowa (2002), has exhibited at premier New York venues including the Asia Society Museum, The Drawing Center, and White Columns, as well as in numerous other group and solo shows and art fairs across the United States, Europe, and Asia. In 2008, Moon will be featured in a solo exhibition at The Mint Museum, Charlotte, North Carolina. She recently was invited to residencies at Art Omi, Acadia Summer Art Program (Camp Kippy), and the Singapore Tyler Print Institute through the Asia Society, among other awards. Her work is part of such prestigious collections as the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Asia Society and Museum, New York, NY; and the Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Richmond, VA and has been critically reviewed by The New York Times, Art Papers, The Washington Post, and The New York Sun, among others. She has recently been nominated for the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award.