Emotionally Charged, Beautifully Controlled

Jungran's paintings are, at first glance, trails of exciting color, reflectories of explosive energy racing across the earth. Stylistically they can be called action paintings; art historians would classify them under the general heading of abstract expressionism. As personal statements, they are emotionally charged works, beautifully controlled persuasive paintings by a young artist of great promise. Jungran is on her way to making an important contribution to a significant new movement in American art: artists who show a fusion of sensibilities bred by the confrontation of two very different cultures. In the work of these artists, ancient Oriental traditions are wedded to modern and contemporary Western art. Today there are many artists, particularly on the west coast of the United States, who by virtue of their ancestry or by predilection, express a marked Oriental influence in their work almost as if their lives are lived on both sides of the Pacific Ocean. Jungran is one of several young women artists born and educated in Korea whose recent work, made in California, is uncommonly strong, bold and self-assured. It is almost as if the fragile-looking women, brought up in a culture which assigned them to a traditional role, are suddenly free to express through their art the power and passion kept hidden for so long. Their shy and restrained demeanor provides effective camouflage for a markedly different reality revealed by their work. Such disclosure will, I believe, reinforce and nourish their talents and ideas, helping them to blossom and expand as artists. Jungran will continue to grow and make and impact on this process of cross-pollination, now in full force among those who live around the rim of the Pacific.

Josine Ianco-Starrels / former senior curator,Long Beach Art Museum, 1988