Artist Talk: Yeesookyung
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Tapping into long-standing ceramic traditions in Korea, contemporary artist Yeesookyung transforms the ceramic as a sculptural medium, while still honoring the potters who have preceded her. The resulting, large-scale sculptures take on biomorphic forms, at once whimsical and uncanny. Learn more
"The master potter was trying to create the perfect piece each time, and he would discard even the ones with the slightest flaw. So I chose to create new forms from them, because perhaps, I don’t believe completely in that kind of perfection. To me, a piece of broken ceramic finds another piece, and they come to rely on one another." — Yeesookyung, interviewed in The Business Times, 2013
Asia Society Texas Center welcomes Yeesookyung to discuss her work as it relates to the Fayez Sarofim Grand Hall exhibition, the first at Asia Society Texas Center to exclusively feature a contemporary Korean artist. Yeesookyung’s large-scale sculptures feature hallmarks—such as celadon and blue and white glazes, and the unique form of repair using gold and lacquer—but do so in amalgamations of shattered ceramics, pieced together to achieve her unique dimensional effects.
Related Links
The Korea Times: Telling Stories Through Pottery
Chaos Magazine: Yee Soo-Kyung: Picking Up the Pieces
About the Artist
Yeesookyung received a BFA and an MFA in painting from the National University in Seoul and completed notable residency programs at Villa Arson, Apex Art, and the Bronx Museum. Her work has been shown internationally, including in the recent exhibitions Women In-Between: Asian Women Artists 1984–2012 at the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, the 2012 Korea Art Prize exhibition at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul, Korean Eye 2012 at Saatchi Gallery in London, The Collectors Show: Weight of History at the Singapore Art Museum in 2012, and K.P.O.P.: Korean Contemporary Art at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei.
Yeesookyung’s works are in the permanent collections of the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Korea, the Leeum Samsung Museum of Art in Seoul, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, IFEMA ARCO Collection in Madrid, Echigo-Tsumari City Collection Japan, Saatchi Collection in London, and the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas, among others. She lives and works in Seoul, South Korea.
This exhibition was made possible through major support from Chinhui Juhn and Eddie Allen, Mary Lawrence Porter, the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance, Nancy C. Allen, Nancy and Robert J. Carney, The Clayton Fund, the Hearst Foundations, Reinnette and Stan Marek, and anonymous friends of Asia Society. Lead funding also provided by Leslie and Brad Bucher, Holland and Jereann Chaney, The Favrot Fund, Bebe Woolley and Dan Gorski, and Dorothy Carsey Sumner. Funding is also provided by the Texas Commission on the Arts and through contributions from the Friends of Exhibitions, a premier group of individuals and organizations committed to bringing exceptional visual art to Asia Society Texas Center.
