Jiha Moon discusses All Kinds of Everything

Tuesday night I attended Jiha Moon’s lecture for her solo exhibition All Kinds of Everything at SCAD Atlanta. The majority of works in the exhibition were the result of her year long residency at the renowned Fabric Workshop and Museum (FWM), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 2011. It was great to see this collection of works together for the first time.

Jiha discussed how this residency changed her practice as a painter to that of a mixed media artist. Before the FWM residency, ink and acrylic were her primary tools to build “floating landscapes” housing an array of rendered cultural signifiers. Jiha now consistently employs the artifacts she collects (stickers, embroidery, postcards, packaging, etc…) to represent themselves as signs in the works.

Jiha Moon, Rota, 2010, In collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum fabric, acrylic, Hanji, found objects on custom stretcher bar, 27.5 x 37.5 inches — Jiha Moon, Rota, 2010, fabric, acrylic, Hanji, found objects on custom stretcher bar, In collaboration with the Fabric Workshop and Museum, 27.5 x 37.5 inches

The most radical example being Rota, a composition full of color yet the only application of paint is to the custom-made stretcher securing the collection of rainbow strip pin cushions, hacky sacks, felt peaches, and other examples of kitsch collected by the artist.

All Kinds of Everything, 2010, oil, acrylic paint, collage with Hanji, custom stretcher bar on silk organza, In collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum, 27.5 x 37.5 inches.

All Kinds of Everything, the mixed media work anchoring the exhibition and providing its title, seamlessly encompasses her expanded palette of mediums into one painting. It is the perfect storm, utilizing the graphic flatness of cut packaging, collaged fabric and the impromptu brushstrokes of acrylic paint. A custom-made stretcher, cut, painted and collaged emerges behind a gauze of silk organza, resembles the rising sun of Japan’s flag partially obstructed by an unexpected black cloud entering the left side of the frame. The weather imagery is not an accident, Jiha talked of turbulence and weather patterns inspiring her compositions and juxtaposing the opacity and flatness of graphic signs against thin washes of color to create depth of field in the space of the Western rectangular frame.

All Kinds of Everything exemplifies Jiha restlessness with expanding her definition of painting and the importance of considering everything that enters the viewers’ field of vision. Much like Brancusi extending sculpture to the pedestal, the support is part of the picture.

Thanks so much to SCAD Atlanta and Alexandra Sachs for bringing this collection of works together.

Next up for Jiha in Atlanta will be her debut of ceramic works in her upcoming solo show for the Working Artist Project Award at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia opening this September 7, 2013.

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