I want my work to be a gateway, to touch viewer more viscerally. What is felt then is both concrete and atmospheric. Furthermore, I believe in the notion that art is a language that can deliver a meaning of what is felt or sensed, but remains invisible. What is invisible is always there in a work; it is a message that is mysterious and profound. For myself, working in clay allows me the opportunity to offer “tactile pictures” and a range of impressions that I have gathered over time. These include memories and questioning my own Korean identity. While these impressions are unique to my experience, I believe they also cross the lines of shared human experience. Things that I have seen, heard, touched, and tasted turn into subject matter for my work. Everything that I experience in life has a potential for providing a basis from which my work can be born.
The colors and customs of Korea are a source of inspiration for my work. They are an integral part of my personality as well as a source for developing a palate from which to elicit emotion. Rainbow or primary color schemes symbolize protection, especially from sources of evil. While Buddhist traditions are full of symbolizations relative to the finding and enduring paradise on earth, my goal is to discover new imagery that suggests these traditions yet in personal and signifying framework-using clay as the medium for expression.
Motion and movement are important aspects in my work as it relates to the sinuous thrust of expansive space which I view as a metaphor for the human condition, and like the world is more than the sum of its parts. In this respect my ceramic installations are membranes or skins, through which a viewer can experience as a kind of portal, or means of access. The installations I create are dimensional reliefs that serve to enclose and protect. My work is always defined by interior space, where the wall is a passage, path and gap. The walls that I occupy are continuous; they activate imaginary passage between two cultures.
My work narrates and patterns my memories. I am moved to transforms a simple mass of clay into a very dynamic skin of space, in which geometries extend its territories. As drawn particles of memory, my work, like the cells of skin, are planted on the wall and hence become products of meditation. Utilizing methods of repetition, my ceramic sculptures and large wall installations offer me a unique opportunity to unfold impressions on this existence. In this respect I am interested in how my work occupies real and continuous architectural space, and become integrated in existing its surrounding and space.