6/4/2018
Artist Youjin Moon - New England Home Magazine
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Home » Art and Style » Artist Youjin Moon
A r t i s t Yo u j i n Mo o n B o s t o n - b a s e d a r t i s t Yo u j i n Mo o n’s i m a g i n a t i ve p a i n t i n g s , d r a w i n g s , a n d v i d e o s i n v i t e e x p l o r a t i o n o f a re a l m s o m e w h e re b e t w e e n re a l i t y a n d a d re a m w o rl d .
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May – June 2018
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Artist Youjin Moon - New England Home Magazine
Will robots w ith ar t iďŹ cial intelligenc e replac e desig ners and ar t i sts? Count on it , say the
futuri sts. No one i s immune.
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Artist Youjin Moon - New England Home Magazine
Not so fa st , in si st philosophers of ar t and desig n.
They have long held that prac t it ioners have something even the cleverest AI robot won’t
be able to hack : an imaginat ion. Youjin Moon’s imaginat ion i s a ca se in point . It flies,
burrows, sw im s — even keyboard s — to that realm beyond the sen ses, reemerging w ith
images that we all can see. In paint ings, c ollages, and videos, those images tell stories of
the c osmic to the microc osmic, the biological to the indust rial, the solid to the liquid to
the ga seous, to gold, black , magenta , frozen white, to bir th and rebir th. Such layering and
ju xtaposit ion sets us on path s to our ow n t ruth.
Moon wa s born between sea and mountain s bordering S outh Korea’s sec ond largest city,
Busan, in 1985. From elite g rammar and sec ondary school s dedicated to the ar ts, she went
on to earn a deg ree in oriental paint ing at Hongik University in S eoul, and two ma ster’s
deg rees at the Ma ssachusetts College of Ar t and Desig n, one in paint ing and another in
film and video. The c opious imaginat ion manifested in her paint ing , draw ing , and video
ha s att rac ted a g row ing follow ing in shows from Argent ina to New York to
Czechoslovakia , a s well a s her adopted hometow n of B oston.
Her ability to create images out of what i s not seen and to make them into dream-like
narrat ives awaken s the imaginat ion of the viewer to equally dream-like images and
narrat ives of their ow n.
“If zero i s reali st ic and ten i s fic t ional, I want to explore four, five, si x,” says Moon in her
carpeted studio, close by Ma ssAr t . “And while exploring , framing ent ranc e points into my
work that are c ont rolled and yet spontaneous at the same t ime, offering others those
adventures in perc ept ion, just a s one unroll s an A sian scroll.”
A work table di splays a c ollage in prog ress of organic shapes, snips of her ow n film
footage, and her callig raphy glued to ric e paper.
A falling sun hangs on a honey- c olored slope. An eclipse shroud s the moiré screen
desc ending along thi s slope, far right . One yearn s to follow dow n, see what’s what in
those darkened valleys, but al so draws back , afraid.
Named after the solar system’s largest moon, Ganymede i s a st ill on Moon’s studio wall,
taken from one of her three videos exhibited at the De Cordova’s 2016 Biennial. The
images are personal a s well a s c osmic, a story of eclipsed happiness, the sliding off its very
edge into the unknow n. For why leave a sunny slope for a featureless penumbra? The
moiré pattern of the screen, its flat , metallic flavor, its rude diagonal sla sh along
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Artist Youjin Moon - New England Home Magazine
Ganymede’s gold-limned circumferenc e provokes that journey to see what’s below and
behind, a journey that takes us through Moon’s four th, fifth, and si xth points between
reality and fic t ion.
In thi s par t icular realm, Moon moves ea sily between media . In an unt itled oil paint ing , a
materializat ion direc t from Moon’s imaginat ion, a crouching , silvery danc er on a moonlit
night floats above a spiraling cha sm, its extended foot touching a black chi seled wall seen
from above. Meanwhile, a smaller shadowy figure in side the cha sm a sc end s to a t ilted,
night mari sh cliff house. Will the benig nly pinki sh, helmeted figures in the left margin
c ome to the rescue, or do they share the same fate a s the silver danc er and the shadowy
figure, being all one in the same?
In another st ill, thi s one from a 2015 video ent itled Europa after Jupiter’s ic y moon, one
imagines looking through a New England w indow in w inter where frozen st riat ion s reveal
a thicket of bare branches. S omehow the branches and st riat ion s seem int imately
c onnec ted, and yet how?— they are really quite different in pattern, c olor, and texture.
“I see interc onnec t ion s wherever I go, though I’m not really looking for them,” Moon says.
“I make those c onnec t ion s apparent in my work in a way that’s spontaneous and at the
same t ime highly c ont rolled. No c onnec t ion i s purely random.”
One can only wonder what un seen c onnec t ion she w ill make next and how her powers of
imaginat ion w ill bring it to life, gift ing the rest of us. AI robots take note.
EDITOR’S NOTE: To see more of Youjin Moon’s work , vi sit youjinmoon.c om
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