The Quotient of Transcendence in the Paintings of Hye Ja Moon

June 15, 2021

By John Austin

What is most evident in the vibrant paintings by Hye Ja Moon exhibited recently at Artifact is a transcendent reality removed from the everyday, away from the prosaic. The ‘here’ and ‘now’ is made otherworldly and eternal. Colorful geometric patterns and structures is the basis upon which we experience the sense of spiritual. Elements in Hye Ja Moon’s paintings celebrate the understanding of humbleness and the mystery found in the world of imagination. Her very personal style is well crafted and filled with an endearing rectitude; it draws its charge from the intuitive search for exactitude while being quite unconventionally quirky in many instances.

The key to the artist’s creative process is its richness and its deceptive simplicity which resonates with striking contrasts and juxtapositions within each work. Merging viewpoints fused in many of Hye Ja Moon’s paintings and give them an op-art feeling. The intensity of opposites results in the remarkable patterns and unexpected combinations of presented and suggested objects through image evoke and expressed. The artist’s paintings wisely allow us to understand her own unorthodox approach in which an impulse to allow the image to unveil itself is the main, determining factor of the art making. Here, an intuitive revelation is the guiding principle of the creation which helps the beholder to experience the artist’s poetic integrity that imbues all of her paintings with convincing rightness.

John Austin is an art writer living and working in Manhattan.