jihamoon He always knew that he was going to be an artist, but he also knew that he had to get out of South Korea to exploit his talent, one that was not always understood, but just as he understood that he had to leave home to succeed, he saw that the incompetence it was the best way to reach a certain understanding.
"My job it often deals with the common misunderstanding of people about racial misconception and cultural appropriation, "says the artist, whose multimedia compositions encompass iconography that references popular culture in contrast to ancient tradition.
Forced to reinvent herself, she devoted herself to studying, constantly painting and experimenting as a catalyst for a fundamental evolution, and evoking her own Korean ancestry through the use of materials such as Hanji paper, Moon launches into a deeper exploration to identify the connections. between the cultures of the world.
Source: Mindy SolomonGallery
Born in 1973, at age 25, upon graduation from school, she became the only member of her family to travel to the United States, where he obtained his second master's degree in art study, however, despite beginning to become fully fledged in his gremio, her work was forcibly stopped in 2001, following the September 11 attacks, rendering her unable to work.
He was able to overcome the heaviest moments of his formative years and took up the art again. Soon, while taking classes on the pictorial styles of Nibujon y West, jihamoon he began to define his colorful style, one that by creating a cultural iconography that traverses the past and the present, plays with the mind and visual perception of the viewer.
Endlessly seeking promotion in galleries and independent studios, Jiha finally received the prestigious Painters and Sculptors Grant from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, which catapulted his work that today, more than 20 years into the art scene, that his canvases are in important collections throughout the United States, and of course, his native South Korea.
Moon draws inspiration from life on the subject of her work. “I am an observer: I observe people and their culture all the time. I see their tendencies and behaviors, I listen to their stories and I infuse that in my work, "says the artist who finds her greatest influences in the people she meets in everyday life, as well as in art history books or in her fellow artists.
From them and from this contact that is established, she manages to imagine popular culture and how it becomes part of her own history. Often using those logos, historical patterns, references to folk art and certain color relationships, he develops a story told by means of overlapping symbols.
Throughout his career, Moon has transformed the object into painting and painting into sculpture. She alternates between the media as a way of telling stories with attention to the formal techniques of each trade.
Today, installed in Atlanta, also wrapped in the culture of the ceramics and defined as one of the most promising young art talents from the two countries she represents, Moon is a visionary who has managed to maintain herself in the perpetual state of "other" while drawing on numerous histories and cultures, distilling rogue works of art that have no filter, just a quirky mix that combines a number of references.
For the art curator, Daniel fuller, through mischief and rebellion, Jiha is the Bart Simpson of the current painting scene, perfectly exemplifying the new identity of the city in which he has decided to reside.
Few artists have the ability to do riffs and references to art history like Moon does. Woven throughout the exhibition are connections with Andy Warhol, Angry Birds, Pablo Picasso y Disney, but equally closely interwoven are references to the deepest problems of identity, place and belonging.
For the artist, probing someone to think in the other person's perspective is an extremely valuable quality of life, and it is that most of art is not the obvious, but what underlies, which forces you to think , and that is where the talent and the message behind the work de Jihamoon, that he prides himself that an understanding similar to the process of meeting someone slowly occurs through his work.
Jiha grew up hearing her parents say, "Don't do this and don't do that"; her son hears that from her too, and yet she is one of the most defiant people he has ever met on earth. In the end, the artist recognizes these challenges and persists, building multivalent visual narratives strongly marked by the co-fusion of the cultures she lived, making her paintings bright with luminous acrylic brush strokes on paper hanji Korean brown mounted on canvas or panel, the meeting point between the old and the new.
Her contemporary reinterpretations of Korean classical arts make her a must-see contemporary artist.
