No Peach Heaven: MuRungDowan
New works by Jiha Moon
Exhibition runs January 12 – February 16, 2008
Opening reception Saturday, January 12 at 7pm
Artist talk begins at 6:30pm
SALTWORKS is very pleased to announce the debut solo exhibition of new works by Atlanta-based artist Jiha Moon entitled No Peach Heaven: MuRungDowan. Moon, a native of South Korea, draws upon Korean mythology and folklore to create intricate landscapes that are richly enigmatic and playfully clever. Conceptually, the work is heavily influenced by Moon’s own experiences of reconciling the divergent philosophies of Eastern and Western cultures.
Stuart Horodner, Curator at The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, makes the following observations on Moon’s works in his exhibition essay Finding No Peach Heaven: “Working on rare handmade Hanji papers from her native Korea not only offers Moon a tremendous surface richness to expand upon (using improvisational techniques from the Surrealist playbook), but also provides a traditional terra firma on which to build her utterly contemporary point of view. Her inclusive vision embraces Tang Dynasty painting and collectable kitsch, Disney’s classic animations and DeKooning’s notion of “the slipping glimpse.” Coursing through most of Moon’s work, are thin lassoes of line, wrapping objects in playful bondage and forming trajectories of time and desire.
While visiting the artist’s studio in Atlanta this fall, she told me the story of MuRungDowon, in which a fisherman follows the blossoming peach flowers along a creek until he finds himself at the entrance to a cave. Going further inside, he comes upon a utopia where there is no war and great happiness. Peach trees abound and people in silk robes care for him. Eventually, he is blindfolded and returned to his own land, where he tells everyone about his experiences. Many expeditions are undertaken to find the cave again, but they all fail, and the magical Shangri-La becomes a legend.
Her new works feature bold compositions painted on centrally located fan shapes. This is a new formal device in Moon’s arsenal, and she has stretched the fan from its classic silhouette to a more horizontal proportion, recalling the film screen or picture window. Each scalloped portal sits on a monochrome field of rice paper, whose repeated patterns are made more optically elaborate by the addition of lines rendering natural phenomena with coloring book clarity. This figure-ground relationship provides Moon with increased opportunities for pictorial delight, as she establishes the firm edge between inside and outside only to playfully contradict or collapse it.
With a nimble wrist, loaded brush, and synthesizing spirit, Jiha Moon embarked on a comic road trip to find the creek that leads to the cave that reveals a legendary land of transcendent beauty...”
Jiha Moon was born in TaeGu, South Korea and currently lives and works in Atlanta, GA. She has exhibited widely throughout the United States, Europe and Asia in solo and group exhibitions. Moon completed two artist residencies in the summer of 2007: Art Omi in Ghent, New York and the Acadia Summer Arts Program (Kippy Kamp) in Bar Harbor, Maine. In 2008, she will complete the Program Headlands Center for the Arts Golden Foundation Fellowship residency program in Sausalito, CA. Her work has been acquired for such notable collections as the Hirshorn Museum, D.C.; the Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Richmond, VA; the Neuberger Berman Art Collection, New York, NY; the Singapore Tyler Print Institute, Singapore; and the Asia Society and Museum, New York, NY, and the Mint Museum in Charlotte, NC. This is Moon’s first solo exhibition at SALTWORKS.
Finding_No_Peach_Heaven.doc