About the Artist
Jun Mo (Brian) Koo was born in Seoul, Korea, in 2000. He studied at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and transferred to the University of Southern California. Making use of materials such as graphite, ink, acrylic and oil paint, and canvas, he constructs paintings that originate from his personal experiences. More specifically from his various emotional states. His simple compositions often suggest an open and multitudinous narrative.
PHASE, 2022
About the Work
PHASE is an installation of nine paintings that represent a cycle of human emotional phases. It is comprised of eight portraits, hung in a circle, with a painting of the moon in the center. The portraits lack almost all facial features and expression. This makes it difficult to identify who’s portrait it is and understand what kind of emotional phase they are in. The figures are painted in various angles and experimentally, in monochromatic and analogous color palettes with expressive paint-handling that gives equal importance to the backgrounds and the portraits. The cyclic nature of emotional phases are implied in the circular installation. As there is a cycle of moon phases, there is also a cycle of emotional phases. This could be anyone’s emotional phase, and the complication Jun Mo depicted here has come to identify how human emotion is not always simple and straightforward.