Making the Invisible Visible

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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 .

Te x t b y L o u i s P o s t e l

May – June 2018

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Artist Youjin Moon - New England Home Magazine

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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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