With unruffled confidence, Paige Jiyoung Moon’s, “Gen 3” reveals small-scale acrylic paintings depicting informal rituals from her daily life with a profusion of care. Most of the time memories get packed away, but in this case, Moon’s style of painting makes the details of life itself known, allowing audiences to become better observers of life. In Three Generations (2024), two women, likely a mother and daughter, lay in a bed tenderly together with a child nearby.  Disorder is upon the bedroom they rest in, where objects are distinctly littered across the surfaces of the room. Each item, from hair dryer, table fan and diapers to backpack, phone charger, Tylenol and many more objects, are imbued with their own narrative space. It’s as if you can picture how they arrived in their tousled state, adding a sense of task in an already busy scene. The amount of stuff Moon fits into a painting embraces inventory in a way that positions the work somewhere between document and memoir. In this hybridity, I sense Moon wishing to create a record of her life, restoring its honorable condition through her subjective nature of reportage. With simple yet highly intricate renderings, it seems Moon begins with painting events to then derive meaning from them as opposed to the other way around. Life differs from painting in that it is brimming with hazy details, however, everything that is included in Moon’s painting summons significance because she directs us towards it and entrusts us with seeing how domestic ceremonies add to the amenity of the world.

Steve Turner
6830 Santa Monica Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA
On view through June 22, 2024