Jiha Moon

Jade Valley, 2007, ink and acrylic on Hanji paper over canvas, 18 x 18 inches

Checked out Jiha Moon's show fabulous fictions at the Moti Hasson gallery when I was in New York last weekend and couldn't resist adding another work by this super talented artist to my collection. This painting is absolutely gorgeous. You can't really grasp the intensity of the colors in this jpg, though, and you also can't see the way Jiha has painted the sides of the canvas, which makes this landscape feel more lush and complete. I also like the way she uses spirited pinks in her palette. She says it's her favorite color - plus I think she's a little bit punk, too. If you're in New York before June 16, stop by the gallery and take a look at the show.

Jiha's show got a great review in the New York Sun last week. Here's an excerpt:

In contrast to the enigma and quietude of Messrs. Cook and Ballard, Ms. Moon goes for the jugular in exhilaratingly complex, brightly hued fantasy evocations of waves and clouds. This is the debut solo exhibition of the young Korean-born artist who is based in Atlanta, Ga. Her paintings are staged collisions, both literally and culturally. A typical work is a bright cacophony, meticulously orchestrated to keep billowy forms and textures distinct. The associations are high and low, east and west, looking with equal and random enthusiasm to Pan-Asian animé effects, Old Master drawing techniques, and psychedelic pop abstraction. "Scholar's Garden" (2007) describes a lovingly complex imaginary space in which credible perspective and ornamental flatness are fused and confused. There are deliciously jarring greens for distant and proximate verdure. Viscous, coagulating acrylic sits upon ethereal, subdued ink washes, evoking disparate senses of scale. The smaller works are better resolved, generally, than the larger ones, and in one or two instances the use of decals seems forced and predictable. But by and large this is a debut that trumpets technical accomplishment and formal ambition. It is hard to say what, if anything, these mad landscapes mean, but they are rich and fun, inviting exploration.