Exhibition view of Isaac Moon’s solo exhibition “Rock & Roll” at Museumhead, Seoul. (November 24, 2022 – January 28, 2023). ⓒ Museumhead and the artist.Museumhead presents Issac Moon’s solo exhibition “Rock & Roll” on view through January 28, 2023.
Isaac Moon is an artist who has experimented with the history and methods of sculpture in various ways. In this exhibition, he contemplated the existence of a sculpture centered on the material of soil by observing the “mountains” and “rocks” of Seoul. The artist climbed the mountains in Seoul, such as Bukaksan, Bukhansan, and Inwangsan, inspected the rocks, and collected soil there.
The exhibition title reflects the literal meaning of the object and the action rather than a musical context. In one of his series, the artist overlaid the collected soil on a pre-made clay plate. These plates were made in an abstract form as opposed to reproducing the actual shape of the mountain. Using ink and paper used in traditional Korean calligraphy and painting, the artist improvises and quickly sketches the outlines of mountains. He then molds the clay plate based on the shape of these drawings. The plates intersect in various directions, resembling the placement of blocks. During the process, some parts are broken, or the front is twisted, creating three-dimensional sculptures.
The rough surfaces of the soil-covered pieces represent not only the mountains and rocks the artist observed but also evidence of the experience of visiting them and collecting soil. The work was created to visually reveal materiality so that the audience can perceive certain changes and movements through the visual characteristics of the surface rather than expressing the object as the massive materiality of mountains and rocks or as a physical experience containing a certain dynamic movement.
The artist’s works traverse Cubism, Abstract Expressionism, traditional Korean art, and modern ceramics, and while accompanying the labor of climbing, they also express the accumulated time and space of rocks. The core of the artist’s work is that he poses questions about sculpture from various perspectives by experimenting with the history and methodology of sculpture while expanding the connection to his previous works.
Isaac Moon (b. 1986) held solo exhibitions at Kumho Museum of Art (Seoul, 2021) and Factory 2 (Seoul, 2019). This year, he also participated in the Sculptural Impulse exhibition at the Buk-Seoul Museum of Art. He has also participated in other group exhibitions held at institutions, such as Platform L Contemporary Art Center (Seoul, 2019), Insa Art Space (Seoul, 2018), Doosan Gallery (Seoul, 2017), and has been a resident artist at Geumcheon Art Space, Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture.
