Hye Ja Moon

Hyeja Moon’s Composition of Two Light Sources (2019) series – Critic Soyoung Cho, April 8, 2019

The latest works by Hyeja Moon can be considered as the landmark that shows her long thoughts in her mind have reached to the starting point of her painting career all the way again. That is “Matisse’s colors and Mondrian’s abstracts geometric.”  She titled the works <Compositions of Two Light Sources>. And the two light sources are, of course, Matisse and Mondrian who have long occupied her heart ever. What influences on Hyeja Moon’s work did those two great artists have? Matisse and Mondrian respectively. 

First, according to Matisse, sound is granted its unique characteristic by music, and colors get their beauty by the composition of visual arts. Matisse also had an effort to revive the beauty of pure colors and to limit pictorial details so that he was able to focus on his themes. 

As mentioned above, Hyeja Moon influenced by Matisse also shows a similar usage of colors and composition: using pure colors without mixing them on the pallet and leaving out details to focus on the themes. Especially, in the series of <Composition of two light sources> 2019 she expresses her dynamic energy with the least pictorial elements like lines, faces, and colors.  The two light sources are not drawn or painted, but they can be inferred by the composition. On the canvas the undrawn light sources are composed with the lines, colors, and faces.  The two light sources let the light rays go anywhere forward even though they are not drawn. 

Secondly, the artist’s notes are going to be cited to see how Mondrian’s abstract geometric influenced Moon’s upcoming series.

Mondrian expressed the idea that we were able to get to the essence when we analyze and simplify something through the creation of the De Stijl movement. In fact, Hyeja Moon the artist, in her note in 2015, mentioned that she was greatly influenced by Mondrian’s <Broadway Boogie-woogie>.  She was startled to the work of art by Mondrian because the straight lines and dots and colors that separates the screen seemed to be dancing for music. Moon in her note in 2015 wrote that she wished the viewers to have such free feeling of fullness through her works as if she experienced through the work of Mondrian.

In conclusion, Matisse and Mondrian are the two light sources (the motives) through the world of her work.  The decorative and dynamic energy she has analyzed, observed and implemented for a long time is represented solely in lines, faces, and colors in the upcoming series of her work <Composition of two light sources>. This work is the result of her always agonizing over “how to draw the most liberating painting without being tied to everything”

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