Bechtler exhibit peels back expectations

This review by longtime Charlotte arts critic Lawrence Toppman was published by The Charlotte Ledger on August 18, 2026. You can find out more about The Charlotte Ledger’s commitment to smart local news and information and sign up for our newsletter for free here. Ledger subscribers can add the Toppman on the Arts newsletter on their “My Account” page.

by Lawrence Toppman

When I think of feminine images in the visual arts, the last symbol that comes to mind is the perennially phallic banana. Yet there it is, poking its way merrily into multiple pieces in the female-focused “Collection, Reframed: Jiha Moon” at the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art.

Moon, a Korean-born artist in her mid-50s who teaches in Tallahassee, Fla., uses that canary-colored fruit in amusing and occasionally touching ways. It’s a homage to pop-art icon Andy Warhol, who placed one on the cover of the 1967 album “The Velvet Underground and Nico.” (When you peeled the yellow sticker off that LP cover, the banana turned red.)

It’s a derogatory term for assimilated Asian-Americans — yellow outside, white inside — which she may have heard after relocating to the American South half a lifetime ago. And as the peel gets mottled and starts to come apart, it represents the inevitable decay of age, which can be approached with dignity or defeatism.

So to fully enjoy this show, re-think your relationship with the familiar supermarket Cavendish. That’s the point of “Collection, Reframed,” the annual project linking works from the museum’s collection to imported pieces. You’re meant to come away with a changed point of view.

Moon’s curatorial statement stays vague: “My vision was to bring regional and international artists into dialogue through selections that challenge us to think about how we define one’s roots, cultures, spirituality, and political frameworks. … I chose to channel these themes, focusing on women as both subjects and creative forces … and (present) a dynamic juxtaposition of opposites—small vs. large-scale, works on paper vs. sculpture, figuration vs. abstraction, Southern artists vs. historical artists.”

In other words, she picked whatever she liked. I liked most of it, too.

The centerpiece of the show excerpts a series of engravings published in 1964 as “1¢ Life.” Chinese-American artist Walasse Ting persuaded 27 avant-garde cohorts to create a book, including such heavyweights as Rauschenberg, Lichtenstein and Warhol.

Only two were female, Joan Mitchell and Kiki Kogelnik, and the latter made the most whimsical image on display here, “Noir Orange Heart.” A red-and-(banana?)-yellow spaceship blasts upward, narrowly avoiding a pointed black object in its wake. The ship bears a poem, “Orange Naked Woman,” in which the exhortation “Come come” can be interpreted as an invitation to explore the cosmos. Or … er … something else.

Moon has the largest number of works in the show, most designed to make you smile as you work out the allusions. (Wall text will help you.) Many feature the lionlike Haetae, a mythical guardian likely to be surrounded by Korean tigers, clouds, bananas, serene baby Buddha heads, even Grumpy Cat. Moon’s fan-shaped panels in “Traveler” have overtly Asian references: flying cranes, masks of deities hovering in the clouds. A sojourn in Atlanta yielded “Peach Mask IV (Love),” where airborne red dragons interact with Miss Chiquita Banana, this time bearing a basket of peaches on her head.

Moon is often bluntly emotional: Heart emojis indicate desire or optimism, a piece of porcelain is engraved with “LOVE” in Asian-style letters, a vase bears the title “I don’t want to be part of the world where being kind is a weakness.” (Note: The world, not a world. Our world, brimming over with meanness.)

Many of the male artists she chose seem dispensable. Picasso’s undistinguished “Face and Owl” vase appears to have been stuck in solely so the Bechtler can say the exhibit includes Picasso. I couldn’t make anything of Shaun Cassidy’s “Mr. Elephant,” a white ceramic blob with a black steel “shadow” behind it. Moon’s on stronger ground with women, especially Meret Oppenheim and Gina Gilmour.

Oppenheim’s five lithographs, known as “parapapilloneries,” surround butterflies with plants or household objects and turn the insects into things that look like a bat, a four-winged airplane, or wallpaper with thorax and antennae, all surreal reimaginings of identity. (She said one of my favorite things about artists: “If you speak a new language of your own that others have yet to learn, you may have to wait a very long time for a positive echo.”)

The Charlotte-born Gilmour, whose wall text does not reflect her death last December, is represented by works blunt and subtle. “Break Your Guns” wraps a neon sign with that slogan around a Madonna. “Parlor Games” offers a ring of naked figures poised above a blue leg about to slip on a banana peel, another person ready to put a foot wrong in courtship or seduction.

In “A Door in the Woods,” one of my favorite paintings owned by the Bechtler, an angel in a blue spring sky has deposited seeds in the hand of a pale man who’s standing in a wintry landscape. The little flying figure floats patiently, waiting for him to cross over from his world of despair and plant them. Suddenly a show that has appealed mostly to the funny bone and the eye seizes the heart.

Lawrence Toppman covered the arts for 40 years at The Charlotte Observer before retiring in 2020. Now, he’s back in the critic’s chair for the Charlotte Ledger — look for his reviews several times each month in the Charlotte Ledger.