Paige Jiyoung Moon’s small-sized acrylic paintings on canvas and panel (all between 6 and 18 inches square) are expansive narratives. Beautifully rendered in exacting detail, they depict everyday moments that, like going on a hike or hanging out with a friend, are both personal and universal.  The paintings, framed like casual snapshots, convey a photographic veracity. Moon’s style is illustrative and representational. Although she often collapses space and distorts perspective, it is to maximize the amount of information she can include in the work. Warm House (2018), for example, depicts a casually dressed crowd at an Asian restaurant, eating sushi, making toasts and snapping photographs with their cell phones.

Paige Jiyoung Moon, Warm House (2018). Acrylic on panel, 10 3/4 x 14 1/4 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Steve Turner LA.

Moon’s vantage point is a bird’s eye view, looking down from above into the receding space. The food and drink, as well as decor are rendered with the utmost care and precision—beer labels, t-shirt logos and patterns, etc.—give the images a familiar charm. Ko’s Old Apartment (2018) pictures an intimate moment—a sleepover with two young women, one relaxing on a quilt on the floor, the other on the bed. The small room is filled with art books and drawing supplies, as well as a laptop computer. Moon captures the aura of contemporary friendship—being together while simultaneously focusing on their cell phones.

Paige Jiyoung Moon, Ko’s Old Apartment (2018). Acrylic on panel, 9 1/2 x 12 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Steve Turner LA.

Moon also loves nature and hiking and represents her adventures in the natural landscape in addition to painting intimate interiors. In Mirror House (2016), she painstakingly reproduces the multiple images reflected in the facade of Doug Aitken’s glass house (a project created for Desert X 2017). Her painting relays the essence of the desert—its tonalities and plant life—as juxtaposed with Aitken’s alien intervention. The work illustrates the dialectic between culture and nature as Moon chooses to picture a moment when she and her partner are capturing the world with their cell phones.

Paige Jiyoung Moon, Mirror House (2016). Acrylic on panel, 11 x 14 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Steve Turner LA.

A similar dichotomy occurs in Undisturbed Nature (2016), a painting set in the snowy woods in which Moon and a hiking partner, phones in hand, are taking photographs of each other, rather than looking at their surroundings. A third landscape painting, Baldy Road (2018), is an image of a bright blue sky. Moon fills the 18 x 18 inch composition with an expanse of rocky slopes dotted with green trees. People ride a rickety chairlift that takes people to the top of the mountain which cuts across the diagonal, above trails filled with hikers and bikers. Moon’s depictions are selections from the greater narrative of life. Her images are about what she remembers. Created from memory, sketches and cell phone photographs, Moon transforms the banality of the everyday into something extraordinary.

Paige Jiyoung Moon, Baldy Road (2018). Acrylic on canvas, 18 x 18 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Steve Turner LA.

Paige Jiyoung Moon, Days of Our Lives, January 5 – February 16, 2019, Steve Turner LA, 6830 Santa Monica Boulevard, Los Angeles, California 90038. www.steveturner.la