C.U.m, 2012
Acrylic on canvas
8 x 10 inches
F.U.C.k, 2012
Acrylic on canvas
8 x 10 inches
A.S.s, 2012
Acrylic on canvas
13 x 17 inches
N.A.D.s, 2012
Acrylic on canvas
8 x 10 inches
C.O.C.k, 2012
Acrylic on canvas
10 x 13 inches
Jaye Moon
PRIVATE
June 1 – 30, 2025
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PRIVATE presents Jaye Moon’s 2012 Number Paintings, mobilizing systems of communication not to disclose, but to conceal. Within a lineage of conceptual art that privileges structure over narrative, the exhibition reveals strategies of communication that are measured, coded, and aesthetically controlled.
Number Paintings reference On Kawara’s canonical Date Paintings, which adheres to a strict formal program, canvas sizes, restrained grounds, and uniformly rendered dates in the language and gesture. Each date marks a day lived without narrativizing the content of that day. The absence becomes the message, suggesting presence and contemporaneity but withholding any subjective anchoring.
Jaye Moon mirrors this formal apparatus and repurposes it through the lens of linguistic encryption. Her Number Paintings maintain the aesthetic and procedural fidelity of Kawara’s format. Instead of universalized dates, Moon features encoded Braille messages—transposed into numerical form through a system derived from the Braille alphabet’s dot configurations. This use of Braille, a tactile writing system used by people who are visually impaired, further complicates the relationship between legibility, visibility, and access. It serves as a metaphor for the complex nature of communication in subversion, as well as the use of tabooed words. Her language is not absent, but rather present in another register that requires translation.
Where On Kawara constructs privacy through erasure and minimalism, Jaye Moon constructs it through obfuscation and code. Both artists instrumentalize the mode of refusal, turning systems of language into architectures of protection. Their works challenge the concept of communication, particularly in terms of personal or emotional meaning, which must be shielded, deferred, or encrypted. In this sense, communication is not a conduit but a boundary.
PRIVATE frames privacy as an active aesthetic condition. Sustained through visual and linguistic constraints, Jaye Moon’s critical practice offers a poetics of discretion. PRIVATE values the careful and deliberate control of information, as well as resistance and the right to remain unread.
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