Sujin Moon Critical Essay
Garth Grimball
What part of a
sculpture elicits marvel? The most common experience of sculpture, in a gallery
or museum, is to walk around a pedestal as if testing the object’s three
dimensionality. If the sculpture is large enough to be protected by a line on
the floor, viewers are told, “please do not touch.” From an acceptable distance
sculpture is considered not sensed. Only considering the finished form limits
the scope of the medium. We become detached from the action of sculpting.
Marvel emerges in the sculpting.
Sujin Moon
sculpts. Her work concerns the body and performance as much as any molded
object. Time, natural elements, the interplay of weight and effort alchemize in
her sculpting. The immaterial is equal to the material. For Moon sculpture is
an inclusive art. To experience her work is to ask, what isn’t sculpture? Which
is not to say her work is vague or undefined. Her specificity lies in the
ability to make room for the unknown, to allow the process to surprise her.
The biggest circle I can draw (2016) intimates the story of Giotto and Pope
Benedict XI. When the Pope requested an example of Giotto’s work to be
considered for a commission, Giotto sent a hand-painted perfect circle. He got
the job. Moon uses her whole body to achieve the same mastery. Like a human
compass she fixes her right big toe to an imagined center and stretches her
body to its limit with a piece of chalk in her right hand. Slowly she builds
the curving line. Inch by inch her left foot and arm muscle the line of her
body, the line of the compass. She has the taut concentration of a rock
climber. Moon stops at points to slough off pieces of the chalk’s paper
wrapping. The focus shifts from her body and the line to the material. The
transfer of matter, like ice to water, appears as the solid chalk decomposes in
the composition of a circle.
The title, The biggest
circle I can draw, encompasses the tenets of Moon’s work. She tests her
endurance and focus as if responding to a dare. You want to see the biggest
circle I can draw? Well, here it is. Lying stretched on the ground she can’t
see her progress or accuracy. Invisibility as another limitation. The circle
forms not from hand-eye coordination but trusting sensations. Watching her
muscles strain and relax elicits a kinesthetic response. Are my muscles
cramping or am I slowly contorting myself into her shape during the 17 minutes
it takes for the ends to meet? The body, the chalk, and the surface merge into
an experience: circle making.
For Living Island (2020) Moon combines found object and land art with an infusion of dreaminess. During a residency in rural Maine she walked onto a frozen lake and shoveled snow into a huge mass. The simplicity in action belies the wonder in reaction. Moon filmed the process. The opening shot is like an Impressionist painting. Heavy snowfall covers the landscape. On this blank canvas a single figure trudges away from the camera into obscurity. Cut to a mound of white presiding over the naturally occurring contours of a wind-sliced snowpack. Original music by Jeon Yeongjun duets with the sound of wind. The soundscape mirrors the sculpture—natural elements remixed by human craft. The film presents the sculpture like a found object by editing out its creation. As if it just landed on its spot like a sci-fi monolith.
A collage of shots over several months transform the mound into an
island. As it melts a pool collects around the perimeter. The weight of a
metaphor can collapse the physical form. Does the melting represent climate
change? Is the isolation of the sculpted mass akin to social isolation? Seeing
the island melt down to a remnant of its former self, are we meant to think
about how time weathers us all? Living
Island encourages interpretation and remains intact against the limits of
interpretation. The film ends with the same figure walking towards the camera.
The landscape is serene and sun-filled with green trees. Moon brought the
island to life and witnessed it dissolve into its original form.
Distinctions between artwork and artist blur for Sujin Moon. There
is no separation between the weight of her body and the weight of her material.
Weight renders time into a physical feeling. Time continues. Weight changes.
Feel the weight of time. The feeling syncs with the time of the material and
its environment. Sometimes the body itself is the material; its weight is known
but the environment is a mystery to be located.
While attending the MFA program at The School of Art Institute of
Chicago, Moon’s sculpting became acts of locating. Into the Grid: hiding in public (2019) and From the Grid (2018) are a mixed-media diptych of dislocation and
location. Into the Grid sees Moon carrying a mirror around downtown Chicago. In
photographs and video she hides herself behind a reflection. In many of the
photographs it takes a moment to locate her mirage, like an invisible Where’s Waldo? This visible invisibility
actualizes the experience of being in a place but not of a place. Anonymity
feeds freedom and loneliness. Moon is free to play in the unfamiliarity of
foreign space, uninhibited by collective routines. But the photographs suggest
a loneliness of being without the compass of memory. Where are you when no one
knows you and you know no one?
The video captures the awkwardness of hauling a human-sized reflector
through intersections, negotiating distance, bulk, and passersby. Seeing Moon
struggle with the weight and dimensions of the mirror only to peek from behind
with a look of giddy transgression feels like the work of translation. After
hours of memorizing and conjugating, meaning suddenly clicks. Moon locates the
complexity of being new to a place in her body and the reflection of others.
From the
Grid renders the cityscape soft through textiles. When Moon arrived in
Chicago she was struck by the grids within grids. She describes walking around
the downtown Loop as disorienting; the intersecting streets and the rows upon
rows of skyscraper windows blended into an uber-grid. Using a natural-synthetic fiber blend
Moon sewed city planning into tapestries. Buildings and thoroughfares are
reduced to squares and lines. The fabric bunches or folds in places like the
histories built into the city’s structure. Streets thick with protests, policy,
and populations. Moon presented these soft sculptures from the view within a
highrise apartment. Hung on the windows like drapes, the city bleeds through
the transparent parts. Hard and soft materials, the real and the imaginary
meet.
Implicit in an
analysis of Sujin Moon’s work is the digital. She is a sculptor. Much of her work
is site-specific and widely shared via filming and digital presentation. How
many people experienced Living Island in real life? Does it matter? To borrow another
Renaissance tale: the feud between Leonardo and Michelangelo. Michelangelo
claimed sculpture was the “real” art because it is three dimensional. Leonardo
countered that painting was the truer art because sculpting was labor that
caused one to sweat, therefore not fine art. Within this apocryphal exchange is
the tension present in much of Moon’s art. Her work hurdles over distinctions
and dimensions. The digital divide invites a closer viewing rather than
extending the distance between art and viewer. Editing, like sculpting, shapes
transitions. Whether experienced as an image, an object, or a performance, she
is sculpting. What emerges is marvelous.