South Korea

Jaye Moon Builds Lego Housing Units on the Street

December 12, 2012 Artists, Brooklyn, Manhattan, NYC, On the Street, Seoul, South Korea

Street Artist Jaye Moon is doing a diminutive deed to alleviate New York’s ongoing housing crisis by leaving new buildings cradled in the limbs of trees, or wrapped around their trunks.

Street Artist Jaye Moon gets a hand from kids in Seoul, South Korea, where she has brought her distinctive tree houses from New York. December 2012. (photo © Jaye Moon)

Using Legos as building materials, the blocked geometry of her architectural construction is carefully considered and engineered to allow for the expansion of tree limbs and cautious to avoid damage. A Korea-born Brooklyn fine artist with gallery representation doing other work, Moon has more recently expanded her art practice to the street, and her multi-colored housing units have been catching the eye of curious New Yorkers – and thoroughly captivating their kids. Since we first discovered and debuted her work on the web in September 2011, she has also garnered a new collection of Street Art fans.

Jaye Moon. Seoul, South Korea. December 2012. (photo © Jaye Moon)

Moon says she chose Legos as a medium because they are ready-made objects that mimic industrial , mechanical uses and because they summon a certain childlike innocence and sense of play. When you discover one of her tree houses on the street, your mind jumps up to a fascinating miniature world above your head and your hand may reflexively reach to swing open one of the Lillipution doors or to tap your finger on a wee window. During a (aptly named) residency program last week in Seoul, Moon found a few small volunteers who offered to help with her latest Street Art installations. Experts on the intricacies of Legos, her young assistants schooled her, which she says isn’t unusual. “Passersby love to join to help make my tree houses,” she says.

Jaye Moon. Seoul, South Korea. December 2012. (photo © Jaye Moon)

While Moon is not the first on the street to use the popular children’s building blocks – there have been a handful in recent years– she is the only one to take this architectural approach and to expand upon it so extensively. Each carefully planned construction is site specific and is carefully secured so that any attempts at removal will effectively destroy the piece. So while she is fascinated by the idea that housing could easily become mobile and portable, don’t try it with these installations. In addition to the ongoing housing project Moon has also been leaving colorful placards glued onto walls or under nooks, each spelling out phrases, secret missives, and colorfully vulgar words. But primarily for Jaye Moon right now, da house is in Brooklyn!

Jaye Moon. Seoul, South Korea. December 2012. (photo © Jaye Moon)

Jaye Moon in NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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LNY In South Korea with Tradition and GPS

December 11, 2012 Artists, On the Street, Seoul, South Korea

As traditional cultures grapple with technological change that appears at lightening speed the most successful ones are neither rejecting nor accepting it fully: rather they are integrating. While broadcast television had a homogenizing effect on world culture for decades, today’s multi-channel, multi-platform electronic ecosystem affords people the chance to retain local flavor and customs while still texting and surfing and gaming and videoing their girlfriend on a skateboard.

LNY “The Road” Seoul, South Korea. December, 2012 (photo © LNY)

Brooklyn-based Street Artist LNY just returned from Korea, where he contemplated traditional and modern when creating his pieces on the street. He says he developed the new work as a direct reflection of what he observes as a “fractured state” in contemporary society, with consideration for what it may portend.

“Korea is the future,” he says as he recounts the conversations and kimbaps he had during his visit to Seoul, a city he says is riding the cusp of an economic wave.

“What really struck me was this dislocation between the past: myths, legends, magic, tradition, and the future: a country rising to the top of its hemisphere and a city that rivals Tokyo or New York in all aspects,” he says when describing new pieces. An adroit observer, LNY was also contemplating the now traditional colonialist attitude that a Westerner brings to a visit here, and how his own feelings were affected while trying to be clear-eyed.

LNY “The Road”. Detail. Seoul, South Korea. December, 2012 (photo © LNY)

“Like the moment when you take a small bus, packed with people, jetting around old streets. The bus is being guided by GPS and four cameras that give the driver a 360 degree view of his vehicle while he watches TV on the same device that is hanging next to the steering wheel,” he recounts with some wonder and a sense of irony. “All of this is happening while I’m going to paint next to an old temple in a remote neighborhood where the kids get a better education than most American college students. At the same time they are afraid of the shamans and animals that I’m painting because the culture looks down upon these old myths.”

His pieces are full of myth and symbolism, with simple storytelling and psychological underpinning. Transmitted through personal networks on handheld electronic devices, they could not be more hand-made and contextual. It is good when the work reflects the culture and the experience. “This is where the work is coming from and I wanted to share it with you guys,” he says. We’re pleased to share it with BSA readers.

LNY “The Secret” Seoul, South Korea. December, 2012 (photo © LNY)

LNY “The Secret”. Detail. Seoul, South Korea. December, 2012 (photo © LNY)

LNY “Independence” Seoul, South Korea. December, 2012 (photo © LNY)

LNY “Independence”. Detail. Seoul, South Korea. December, 2012 (photo © LNY)

LNY “The Palace” Seoul, South Korea. December, 2012 (photo © LNY)

LNY “The Mountain” Seoul, South Korea. December, 2012 (photo © LNY)

LNY “The Mountain”. Detail. Seoul, South Korea. December, 2012 (photo © LNY)

LNY “Magpie” Seoul, South Korea. December, 2012 (photo © LNY)

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Fun Friday 07.23.10

July 23, 2010 Artists, Italy, Manhattan, new york, NYC, On the Street, Seoul, South Korea

Fun-Friday

Fun Friday Brooklyn Street Art

MOMO at the Fame Festival in Italy

Video-still-copyright-MOMO-Brooklyn-Street-Art

American Street Artist MOMO has been working with abstract, geometric and modernist elements on scaffoldings and walls in New York for a few years. This new video of his participation in the FAME festival shows his sense of humor, command of negative space, and sophistication of placement.

Somebunny’s Getting Up in Seoul

Actually he’s back in New York now but while in Korea studying about public art for the last month, Gaia put up a number of brand new pieces, all in color, and all deeply rooted in the culture, art history, and traditional symbolism of his host as well as the western world. So it’s not just about a rabbit?
Brooklyn-Street-Art-Copyright-Gaia-Korea-July2010 “Sunrise Neighbor” (image © Gaia)

In the video for another piece we see Gaia’s “Ungnyeo in Namdaemun”

“The body of Ungnyeo is composed of buddhist cloud motifs and the center of the massive body has an oval silhouette to signify the womb flanked by two strong inwardly turned hands. The earth woman is then hybridized with the supremacy of the sky to institute the female figure into a role of reproduction versus reception. Within this new iteration of the ancient narrative, the woman animal becomes the most prominent figure of genesis.”

Billi Kid New Vid with Carlito Brigante

Exclusive Gaia “Praying Monk” in Seoul: Pics & Interview

July 10, 2010 Artists, Interview, On the Street, Seoul, South Korea

Evangelicalism, Shamanism, Buddhism, Confucianism. Place together in a Hot Stone bowl and crack an egg on top. Stir.

New York Street Artist Gaia talks to BSA about his second in a series of street art pieces he is doing in Seoul, South Korea, which are combining religious and traditional cultural symbols in ways not seen before.

BSA: What have you been learning about your host country that affects your street art?
Gaia: Korea is an amazing place to work in because it is so culturally rich and ripe with tradition and folklore. But furthermore, it has westernized at such an incredible pace that there is a deep schism between the traditional and the contemporary. That conflict makes for an exciting environment to make hybrid work, to explore these boundaries. For example, the tiger rabbit is the annual cycle but also the shift in identity from Korea’s representation as a rabbit under Japanese colonialism, to its assertion with the coming independence the peninsula of the tiger.

BSA: Who is the figure in the new piece you just completed?
Gaia: The piece is of a Buddhist monk image from the door of a small temple in the mountains that I was visiting for field research. With the wave of (Christian) evangelicalism that has arrived with the western wash that is suffusing Korea right now, I thought it would be pertinent to hybridize/subvert the old tradition with the new influence. Shamanism and Buddhism were expelled from the city of Seoul when the Joseon Dynasty adopted Confucianism.

BSA: This looks like Buddist imagery combined with your classical hands from earlier pieces.
Gaia: The Image of buddhism has returned to the the walls of the palace just a block away from the gate of Gyeongbokgung, the time by the hands of a westerner, and contrasted with praying hands inscribed with the symbols of St Andrew; A portrait of passing times.

BSA: Do you have any new favorite foods?
Gaia: My new favorite foods are bibimbop (duh nam june paik), boolgogi, and the ultimate being Naengmyeon.

Here’s the New Video of Gaia’s “Praying Monk”

Fun Friday 07.09.10: Gaia’s Soul Goes South

July 9, 2010 Artists, On the Street, Seoul, South Korea

Ripping Up the Korean Calendar and Wheat Pasting It Back Together

New York Street Artist Gaia has been having a blast in Seoul, South Korea for a couple of weeks – studying, watching the World Cup, and putting up giant Tigerabbits. Part of his project of lifting symbols from the traditional Korean calendar, this sternly earnest creature combines the animals from 2010 and 2011 into one. Much like the North American Jackalope, the Tigerabbit is elusive and infrequently spotted in the wild, much less the urban environment. Either way, the New Era in Street Art is afoot.

What are YOU looking at? Yeah, those are my ears. You got a problem with that? (photo courtesy Gaia)

TOMORROW – EXCLUSIVE NEW IMAGES of GAIA’s NEXT Piece in Seoul.

GET UP-PAH! BRAND NEW ERA RIGHT NOW. Time to Dance with your Lap-Top.

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