Review by David Tabacnick, the poet
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Jun is an artist of our struggle for self-awareness. "Do not combine the realistic with the abstract," novice artists are advised - so of course Jun does that in "Rest at Chautara." A beautifully drawn hibiscus flower dominates the horizon like a hot air balloon. Very Japanese colors: red, orange, green, blues, and Japanese calligraphy -butestranged, derailed from the familiar paths of conventional refinement. Splotches of subconscious yellow, spider biding on its web, a small house in Rio, Buddha treesoutlined by subconscious flames. Catch your breath between dreams. The way things really are exists outside all possibility of human thought. We can only know the patterns of our knowing, images we make out of our sensuous and intuitive interaction with things.

The surreal is simply thought which is self-aware, for all human thought is limited to a human perspective. Thus when the poet Odysseus Elytes declares that only the surreal endures in art, he means art that is self-aware, that does 'not confuse its irreality with things as they are. This self-awareness liberates . Fiery chaos of the spirit. Buddha's path of peace. An apparent dichotomy bridged by Jun sinuous lines. Is the girl uncomfortably close to the flames, or warmed by them ? Pretty colors, except the blood red shadowing her grave face. "I am a colorist, I want to use all the colors in a painting."

Kant claimed that he had surveyed the entire island of human reason, mapping each mode, everycategory of thought. All the colors.

What an eye-catchy floating fireball of spiritpondered so by the boy. Summer flowers and a big bee, so very correct, a bee on its way to the office. Of course the boy does not see. Jun creates images that are stilled:here the boy and the bee, there drops of water forever carelessly in mid splash towardsthe parched ground,overhead the lion in flight. But that's OK, Art is time.

>> review by Paul Miha, the writer