Showcase of JUN

Jun is an artist of our struggle for self-awareness. "Do not combine the realistic with the

abstract," novice artists are advised - so of course Jun does that in "Rest at

Chautara." A beautifully drawn hibiscus flower dominates the horizon like a hot air

balloon. Very Japanese colors: red, orange, green, blues, and Japanese calligraphy -

butestranged, derailed from the familiar paths of conventional refinement. Splotches of

subconscious yellow, spider biding on its web, a small house in Rio, Buddha tree

soutlined by subconscious flames. Catch your breath between dreams. The way things

really are exists outside all possibility of human thought. We can only know the patterns

of our knowing, images we make out of our sensuous and intuitive interaction with things.

The surreal is simply thought which is self-aware, for all human thought is limited to a

human perspective. Thus when the poet Odysseus Elytes declares that only the surreal

endures in art, he means art that is self-aware, that does 'not confuse its irreality with

things as they are. This self-awareness liberates. Fiery chaos of the spirit. Buddha's

patch of peace. An apparent dichotomy bridged by Jun sinuous lines. Is the girl

uncomfortably close to the flames, or warmed by them ? Pretty colors, except the blood

red shadowing her grave face. "I am a colorist, I want to use all the colors in a painting."

Kant claimed that he had surveyed the entire island of human reason, mapping each

mode, everycategory of thought. All the colors. What an eye-catchy floating fireball of

spiritpondered so by the boy. Summer flowers and a big bee, so very correct, a bee on

its way to the office. Of course the boy does not see. Jun creates images that are stilled:

here the boy and the bee, there drops of water forever carelessly in mid splash towards

the parched ground, overhead the lion in flight. But that's OK, Art is time.