BECKY MOON

Sticks and Stones

April 4-June 21, 2025

Bruno David is pleased to present Sticks and Stones, an exhibition by Korean-born artist Becky Moon. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. In conjunction with the exhibition, Bruno David Gallery will publish a catalogue of the artist’s work.

Sticks and Stones, a series of paintings that explore the themes of belief, tangibility, mass, and gravity. There is nothing as everlasting as the invisible human mind. The mind is a refuge for those who long for a land they can never return to. I want my paintings to be flag posts that remind the existence of the mind that it is real, alive, and persistent. Even when all is lost, the mind lives on.

Becky Moon says “I have been depicting the structure of the mind through arrangements of ordinary objects such as branches, stones, and snail shells. I build the objects out of hundreds of small, squiggly brushstrokes made with meticulous dedication. I value meticulousness because it slowly builds a fortress of reverence for everything the artist chooses to depict. The structures created by those objects celebrate their complexity and tenacity. In my stacked wood paintings like Going… going… gone!, a thin line of gravity holds the hundreds of tree branches together. Their balance shows the role of gravity, a force with qualities similar to belief. One small belief can hold numerous thoughts together.

I come from a half-North Korean and half-South Korean heritage. Growing up, I heard lively accounts from my grandparents about leaving everything North behind to escape war and violence. Their emigration made me question what remains, when everything physical perishes. I realized that the immaterial mind, preserved through love and blood, cannot be taken away. Consequently, I became immersed in depicting the existence of minds.”