Diana Un-Jin Cho

Korean-Canadian artist Diana Un-Jin Cho's colorful and exuberant paper collages guide viewers' eyes to an effervescent tune. The rhythmic juxtapositions of hues and forms recall late Mondrian canvases, evoking a kind of musical patchwork, an aural quilt. Small cut-out geometries of color – complimentary interlocking yellow, red and purple squares, starkly contrasted green and pink quadrangles – make every piece into a series of emotive rises and plunges, with multiple routes and trajectories leading viewers across each collage.

Beyond their musical resonances, Un-Jin's quilted patterns express a personal journey that bares the influences of multiple experiences and histories. Spending her childhood in Korea then immigrating to Canada, her art is an attempted reconciliation of two dramatically different aesthetic traditions, one of which has a particularly rich textile tradition (Un-Jin cites the influence of fourteenth century Chogakbo quilting in Korea). Her art – like her personal history – is a sometimes harmonious, sometimes disjointed assemblage of emotive forms and colors evoking these rich sources and varied experiences.