NEW YORK, NY.- Shin Gallery announced that one of its artists, Hyon Gyon has had her artwork acquired by The High Museum of Art for their permanent collection. This is the second major collection this year (the Brooklyn Museum also acquired her work) to accept Hyon Gyon, and for an artist who is still young in her career, this achievement is remarkable.

The piece the High Museum procured is titled More Money More Happiness (M.M.M.H, 2013). Like many of the other works in this series created in 2013 and inspired by interactions with a Korean Shaman, this piece is a riot of colors and textures. The foundation material is traditional Korean satin, used for making Hanbok dresses.

Attaching it to a stretched canvas and applying a hot soldering iron to burn away the fabric in strips, she produced in M.M.M.H. a complex, textural work whose main figure is topped by a crown floating over what might be a face with flared nostrils, fangs, a lolling tongue, and rainbow streams shooting from the eyes. This figure is also adorned by long dangling gold chains and what may be multicolored chrysanthemums. Additionally there are rivulets of silicone that make the figure of the great jungle cat teeter on the border of being terrifying. Yet there are also small cartoonish interventions, such as the figure of a car, an airplane, and a bright gold piece of currency, Korean won, that plays with the concept of winning by accumulation of wealth. This is a complex, layered work of visual machinery that while initially overwhelming in its vibrancy continues to reward the viewer as it is beheld over time.

Hyon Gyon’s painting practice has recently moved away from this sort of figuration and away from narrative. While her energies have turned more towards a focus on materiality and formal concerns, her previous work is still finding a welcome reception in the collections of enlightened museums. We are indeed happy for Hyon Gyon and expectant that her fertile and inventive mind will continue to surprise and impress those of us who avidly follow her career.