When artists work in a medium as old as earth itself, in a country that has for centuries been recognized as a center for artistic expression in that medium, how do they continue to innovate? This challenge is answered by each of the artists in this exhibition of Korean contemporary ceramics.
YOON Kwang Cho, a leading buncheong artist, is a recipient of Korea’s most esteemed prize for contemporary art, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art’s Artist of the Year. Yoon’s playful, carefree approach and coarse forms belie a powerful imagination and profound originality. KIM Yik Yung, also a recipient of the Artist of the Year prize, creates refined porcelain masterpieces with faceted surfaces that play with light. Min Kyu LEE’s porcelains, filled with recessed squares of negative space, elicit contemplation of the unseen. Young Mi KIM subjects her ceramics to several wood-firings, adding organic textures and colors to her botanical forms. SHIN Sang Ho possesses a vivid sense of texture and form, and the many legs of his African-inspired horse sculpture captures the energy of swift horizontal motion. Jong Sook KANG portrays the immigrant experience as adventurous butterflies, each encountering its own voluptuous Big Apple. KIM See Man’s poetic sensibility transforms functional space into aesthetic space with modern translations of buncheong vessels. Ji Wan JOO’s meditative groups of celadon and white stoneware cubes reference Korea’s ancient tradition of geometric patterns in a contemporary form.
The works by these artists represent the diverse range of ceramic art as practiced in Korea today, and exemplify the creative Korean spirit of artistry and innovation.
February 7, 2014-April 25, 2014
Gallery Opening
Friday, February 7,2014 | 5:30 PM – 8 PM
The Korea Society
Gallery Open Daily, M-F, 10 AM-5 PM
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in Partnership with the City Council.
Famed scholar Robert D. Mowry introduces the development of Korean Buddhist art from its formative phase in the late Three Kingdoms (57BC–668AD) and Unified Silla (668–935) periods through its maturation in the Goryeo dynasty (918–1392), emphasizing architecture and sculpture in the earlier periods and paintings and illuminated sutras in the later periods. In tracing the development of Korean Buddhist art, this lecture explores relationships with China and will identify those characteristics that are uniquely Korean.
In commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the Korean War armistice, award-winning photographer Mark Edward Harris has published North Korea and South Korea, books that capture the two drastically different realities of the divided peninsula.
In celebration of Asia Week New York, acclaimed curator Jane Portal will speak at The Korea Society to introduce the newly renovated Korean Gallery at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston which includes ceramics, metalwork, and paintings from the Bronze Age to the 20th century.