PICASSO, WELCOME TO AMERICA

Madison Ave New York Picasso, Welcome to America June 15 – July 31, 2023

Madison Ave New York

Picasso, Welcome to America

June 15 – September 27, 2023

R.C. Baker

Brandon Ballengée

Romare Bearden

Deborah Buck

Shijia Chen

Billy Copley

Eileen Foti

Björn Meyer-Ebrecht

Jaye Moon

Pablo Picasso

André Raffray

Janet Taylor Pickett

Zhang Hongtu

Every artist since the early 20th century has been influenced by Pablo Picasso.  The protean painter/ sculptor/ printmaker/ ceramicist helped define what “modern” art once was – and is still becoming.  In 1939, MoMA’s staff was gathering 300 works by the world’s “most famous living artist” (according to the museum’s press release) for Picasso: Forty Years of His Art.  A centerpiece of the exhibit was Guernica, his grisaille mural decrying the destruction of the small Basque town by Nazi bombers, in 1937.

Along with Michelangelo and Rembrandt, the name Picasso (1881-1973) has become a synonym – a cliché, even – for “artist.”  But none of the artists in Picasso, Welcome to America see the Spanish-born titan as an old hat.  Instead, these ten Americans find in the European trailblazer constant inspiration and ongoing challenge.  Zhang Hongtu imagines Chairman Mao exposed by glaring illumination similar to the all-seeing lantern in Guernica.  Jaye Moon also reimagines Picasso’s anti-war masterpiece, in When Bob Dylan Meets Picasso, Guernica – using Lego bricks in Braille rather than paint.

The bodies and masks in another Picasso touchstone, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907), come under scrutiny from Eileen Foti and André Raffray through substitution and homage.  Billy Copley finds masks in unlikely surroundings, while Janet Taylor Pickett moves effigies aside to place her powerful female figure at center stage.  Deborah Buck turns Picasso’s infamously harsh male gaze around, painting surreal figures that might be asking, “Who’s crying now?”  In Weary of Treading the Earth, from 1945, Romare Bearden, working in watercolor and ink rather than his later signature collage, energizes cubist space with a circus-like palette.  R.C. Baker riffs beyond Picasso’s Blue and Rose periods through primary-colored aluminum printing plates.  Björn Meyer-Ebrecht’s dynamic wood and enamel sculpture strips the figure to cubist angles and voids, while Brandon Ballengée searches for animals that, like Picasso’s minotaurs, are no longer with us. Original works by Pablo Picasso will also be on view, commemorating the 50th anniversary of his death.

All of the artists in this exhibition have been influenced by Picasso’s experiments with form and perspective – his breaking of traditional and academic rules.  Some of the work here also comments on his darker side, while other pieces engage with the social and political aspects of Picasso’s art.  Ultimately, these ten contemporary artists in Picasso, Welcome to America appreciate the formal and aesthetic complexity of a constant innovator.  This great artist was effectively barred from ever visiting the United States because he was a member of the French Communist Party.  But the joke was on the Feds – Picasso has been in America all along.

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WINGS OF DESIRE

Wings of Desire | Jaye Moon

WINGS OF DESIRE

A Brief Survey of Sculptural Paintings by Jaye Moon

March 25 – April 27, 2022

Jennifer Baahng Gallery is pleased to announce the gallery representation of Jaye Moon, and her solo exhibition, WINGS OF DESIRE, a brief survey of sculptural paintings from 2012 to 2022, with a focus on her work with braille. WINGS OF DESIRE is an exhibition that highlights Moon’s praxis of using braille as an art medium to create freer and wider ways to communicate and open possibilities to everyone. The exhibition will run from March 25 through April 27, 2022, with an opening reception on Friday, March 25, 2022, from 3pm to 7pm.

Viewers will experience Moon’s work through the brilliant colors, bold patterns, and the novelty of using universally appealing, unpolitical, mathematical toys as an art medium. Moon’s LEGO paintings also contain messages transcribed in braille. Braille, which is not a language but a code into which many languages can be transcribed, consists of six dots arranged in the formation of a rectangle. Moon uses braille in her work, presented either as dots arranged in a specific formation, or presented as numbers (with each number signifying what would have been a dot’s position in the rectangle). What viewers will find coded in the braille in Moon’s work are the intricate human stories that we share.

In the poetic and eponymous work, Wings of Desire (2022), LEGO bricks are sculpted to visually capture the opening scene of Wim Wenders’ film Wings of Desire (1987). It depicts an aerial view of two invisible angels looking over a city, and the segregation and power that cause one lonesome angel to feel isolated and desirous to connect with people. It also contains a specific pattern of raised dots on the surface, which form the braille transcription of the script excerpt of a poignant moment in the film. The braille is conspicuous but also seamlessly blended into the background. It is tactile and in plain sight for all to see, but at the same time, it transmits messages just for the traditionally excluded.

In the visually striking, Neon work, People Like You Need To Fuck People Like Me (2012), Moon’s rework of Tracey Emin’s 2007 iconic piece, Moon transcribed Emin’s tantalizing, confessional message into braille presented as numbers. It is another example of Moon using the mode of language for the unseen, for its visual and universal utility, this time to shatter the ice in the silenced discussion of female sexuality. Emin’s feminist message is widely received in the West, yet in many Asian cultures, expressing sexuality, especially female sexuality, is discouraged. By translating Emin’s raw message into numerical code, Korea-born Moon opens up the possibility to hail the same message in the face of discrimination, without fear of ostracism or penalty.

Moon uses braille as an art medium to break new ground in the contemporary human condition of isolation caused by barriers of sexuality and disability. She uses braille because it is based on binary logic that can transcend political, cultural, and social structures. It is also the mode of language for the people who are often overlooked.

WINGS OF DESIRE is an elegant and robust display of stunning, intricate, and inventive works that are both exploratory and instructive: as we shift towards more impersonal communication, we may lose the complexity of our own identities, but we also discover new ways to see our identities and gain a greater understanding of each other. In this pursuit of her own distinctive culture, Jaye Moon is undeterred.

Jaye Moon Soars On Wings of Desire by Paul Laster

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JAYE MOON

Jaye Moon

JAYE MOON

Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY

ARTIST BIO

Jaye Moon (b. 1963) has been crafting interactive braille paintings with LEGO bricks since the 1990s. Her LEGO Braille paintings demonstrate her innovative approach to accessible art, emphasizing inclusivity and tactile engagement. In these works, Moon translates excerpts from movie scripts, song lyrics, poetries, and prose in literature with a distinct approach, including her writing.  Her work is an abstract painting for all viewers with and without the ability to decipher Braille. Touching the surface of the work transcends its aesthetics and takes on the meaning embodied within.

Moon’s work has been exhibited in Brussels, London, Madrid, Mexico City, Miami, New York, Seoul, and Tokyo. Her museum exhibitions include the Brooklyn Museum, the Queens Museum in New York, the Nam June Paik Art Center, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Korea, and the Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art in Korea. Her artwork has been reviewed in art publications, including Art in America, Artforum, Artnet, Time Out, and News Week Magazine, and featured in the Korean middle school art textbook. She received the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant and an MFA in Sculpture from Pratt Institute.  Jaye Moon is the 2025 Hall of Fame inductee of the New York Foundation of Art and is represented by Jennifer Baahng Gallery in New York and Seoul.

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