chapter5 MIJU statement

Jack Fischer Gallery
49 Geary St.
San Francisco, CA 94108


MIJU
artist statement



Working collaboratively, the drawings are passed back and forth, as they are contemplated, reworked, and sometimes erased. There is a blind faith that when a mark, image, or scene is created, it will ignite an idea for the other person to continue.
We use images that speak of a tweaked and strange wonderland. They are like pages from a children’s storybook gone astray; a complacent world turned upside down. Odd compositions and random juxtapositions are used to create a quirky worldview where reality is twisted and everyday compositions become outlandish absurdities.
Children happily at play and prayer, oversize insects frolicking with grannies, self reflecting eyes, bucolic scenes with insecure goofy caricatures, anthropomorphic figures, upside down skunks and virgins, and sorrowful clowns, are among the many motifs that inhabit an uneasy world situated between distilled memories and suspended hopes and fears. There is innocent aspect to many of our works, yet they are symbolic of a deeper malaise, one that speaks of an idiosyncratic parody teetering on a thin line between the absurdly real and the arbitrarily absurd.


Michele Muennig
Juan Carlos Quintana
2007